hello, minotaur: Press release

 

Location
Super Super Markt, Brunnenstr. 22, Berlin

Dates
November 21, 2024 – January 12, 2025

 

hello, minotaur speaks to that electric moment when we face what was always there – both distant and familiar. The exhibition brings together three positions – Gina Folly, Jean Baudrillard, Théo Combaluzier – where image-making becomes a form of truth-telling through fabrication, unveiling layers within the ordinary.

At the Ephesus archaeological site in Turkey, Gina Folly photographs the resident cats who serve as unofficial guardians of these ancient ruins – once home to the Temple of Artemis, goddess of cats. Here, she finally gives form to a long-held fascination, capturing these cats who shape visitors' paths through the site and are cared for by locals. Their rest and play draw attention to unremarkable spaces, directing both visitors' experience and photographer's compositions. In these images, they perform a dual role: Physical custodians of a historical space and figures that resonate with our image-saturated digital culture.

Meanwhile, Jean Baudrillard's Rio (1995) belongs to a period when the French philosopher was developing photography as an extension of his theoretical work: his images seek to capture moments where reality escapes representation – what he called "the shadow that gives its contrast to the world." His photographic practice emerged as an optimistic assertion that something could still elude our fictions, finding in the act of image-making an encounter with objects that resist interpretation. Against our drive toward transparent meaning, his photographs trace instances where the world retains its enigmatic quality.

Recently graduated from Villa Arson and now working from his native Ardèche, Théo Combaluzier explores vernacular architecture as a living language that adapts and transforms across regions and time. Through his investigation of domestic spaces, he reveals how everyday structures carry and transmit social memory. The works presented here contract these spaces into hybrid forms that merge sculptural and painterly concerns, examining how built environments both shape and are shaped by cultural values.