Hoel Duret: Low Cat. Villa Merkel Esslingen

Hoël Duret’s artistic practice combines fictional stories with real events, forming a visual language based on science fiction, post-apocalyptic cinema, and modernist utopias; the relation­ship between nature and technology is examined against the background of progressive digitalization. The ­installation in the entrance hall of Villa Merkel, for instance, presents a jungle quote embedded in a network of cables. As a result, the proliferating plant-technological organism seems to be engaged in an exchange of information—as though man could not but always control everything, including the growth of plants. Hoël Durets uses an algorithm based on climate data published online to control his artificial ecosystem. This data choreographs in real time the lighting, the vaporization, and the soundtrack of the instal­lation. Scientifically measurable parameters of ­current climate change are thus inscribed into a spatial ensemble oscillat­ing between romanticism and science fiction. This lends the installation a minatory, latently apocalyptic undertone while also reflecting our profound yearning for Arcadia.

Andreas Baur worked in Hamburg for the Deichtorhallen, the Hamburger Kunsthalle, and the Kunsthaus from 1998 to 2001. He was appointed founding director of Kunsthaus Baselland in Muttenz near Basel; since April 2001 he has been director of Villa Merkel, galleries of the city of Esslingen am Neckar. There he has supervised projects with Mark Dion, Darren Almond, Daniela Keiser, Willie Doherty, Emily Jacir, Hamish Fulton, Lois Weinberger, Melanie Smith, and others, conceived thematic group exhibitions and established the format "Good Space – political, aesthetic and urban spaces." Yung Ma is a curator of contemporary art and moving image. He holds an MA in Curating Contemporary Art from the Royal College of Art, London; a post-graduate degree in Film Direction from the Beijing Film Academy; and a Bachelor of the Arts from the University of Reading, UK. His recent exhibitions and projects with M+, West Kowloon Cultural District, Hong Kong, include: M+ Screenings; Mobile M+: Moving Images (2015); and Mobile M+: Yau Ma Tei (2012). Other recent exhibitions include: No Puppet is Dumber than his Puppeteer, The 2nd CAFAM Biennale, Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing (2014).