Jacopo Godani & Dresden Frankfurt Dance Company and Winter/Hörbelt

On Friday September 28, the performance Framing Reality will celebrate its premier, presented by the Frankfurter Kunstverein in collaboration with the Dresden Frankfurt Dance Company under the direction of Jacopo Godani. At dusk, the Kunstverein’s windows will serve as a venue for dance interventions, combined with a dramatic light show. The building’s austere, modernist architecture with its rectangular glass facade becomes an oversized light box and a unique stage that radiates into the new streets of the Dom-Römer neighborhood.

Seventeen dancers create tableaux vivants—living images. Directly behind the window facade, a sequence of movements unfolds in connection to a spectacular lighting concept, forming a high point of the evening event in the Altstadt. Human bodies, light, color, and movement are woven into a rousing performance that expresses Godani and the Dresden Frankfurt Dance Company’s precise choreographic vernacular. The rhythm of the 60 minute performance is structured through a sequence of lights and electronic music specially programmed for the piece. Godani modifies the transparency of the window facade with semi-transparent materials that make the dancers’ bodies fluctuate between sharply defined and abstracted forms. The museum context is Godani’s starting point for reinterpreting the dance-like choreographies into two-dimensional figures, allowing them to be seen as taking place within a framed composition and thus drawing moving pictures of flowing abstraction.

As a second artistic intervention the Frankfurter Kunstverein invited Frankfurt based artist duo Wolfgang Winter and Berthold Hörbelt to create the site-specific installation The Grand Illusion (Die Grosse Illusion). The sculpture—specially designed for the exterior of what is now the oldest house in the new Altstadt—overlooks the new Dom Römer neighborhood and will be publicly accessible to the area’s visitors for half a year. The artwork ist curated by Franziska Nori.

For the sculpture The Grand Illusion on the exterior of the Frankfurter Kunstverein’s building, Winter/Hörbelt use polished steel plates, which underwent a process of folding and overlapping that creates a shimmering effect. With its reflective surface, the two ton form achieves a sense of weightlessness, dissolving the outline of the sculpture and opening it up to its surroundings. The pixelated shell creates ever new fragmentary images of what stands around it.

The traditionally modernist sculpture forms an exciting counterpoint to the romanticism of the historically oriented neighborhood. The sculpture’s reflection dissolves the Frankfurt Altstadt’s reconstructed facades. A collage of different perspectives emerges, constantly changing with the movement of the passerby and time of day. The reflected realities lose their truthful character and break down into disconcerting refractions, rendering one’s perception illusory. The newly constructed Altstadt with its desire for identity and security dissolves once again.

Both projects were initiated by the Frankfurter Kunstverein and resulted from cooperation with numerous Frankfurt firms and participants.

The Dom Römer GmbH and the Frankfurt Tourismus GmbH supported the realization of the sculpture as well as the dance performance. These represent an important contribution to the program of events, celebrating the opening of Frankfurt’s new old town area. The Planungsdezernat and the Kulturdezernat have actively supported the project since its early phases.

The statics for the temporary architecture were supervised by the structural consulting firm Bollinger & Grohmann and the building application was supervised by the architecture firm Schneider-Schumacher. We would like to thank the Nordisk firm for implementing the visual communication campaign.

Press images are available for download on www.fkv.de/de/presse