Win-Win Lottery

Kassel, 2022

From 18 June to 25 September 2022, artists Hannes Egger and Thomas Sterna have rented an exhibition space at KulturBahnhof Kassel and given other artists a chance to win a one-week presentation slot during documenta fifteen. Leaving the decision up to chance rather than a panel of experts, any artist, curator or exhibition organiser interested could enter the prize draw by simply purchasing a raffle ticket. The 13 winners, selected in a total of four draws, were then free to show their works without any requirements regarding content and/or aesthetic input. But not all winners decided to exhibit their own works: Some organised group exhibitions, others gave their slot away. The results varied greatly and were surprising, often breaking with conventional notions of art and standards of evaluation.
The project ended with a panel discussion in the ruruHaus at documenta fifteen with the curatorial team ruangrupa.

26/08-30/08/22 – Edoardo Piermattei & Oliviero Fiorenzi: AMORE 2000

Opening: Friday, 26/08/2022 – 8.30 pm
Exhibition: 27/08/2022 – 30/08/2022
Opening hours: daily 2.30 – 6.30 pm
Closing event: Thuesday, 30/08/2022 – 6.30 pm
Kulturbahnhof Kassel

On the first days of August 2022, absolutely by chance between an aperitif and a swim in the sea, Edoardo Piermattei and Oliviero Fiorenzi met one of the winners of the Win-Win Lottery in Ancona I). From this chance meeting was born the invitation to think of an exhibition inside the Kunst Bahnhof in Kassel, in the week from 25 to 30 August. Chance is at the center of the way in which the two artists decided to use the space of the old Kassel station as a temporary studio, as well as of the choice of the work materials.

Edoardo Piermattei has interpreted the station’s space as a place of missed expectations, through a large sculpture in plaster and pigmented concrete: two three long meters fingers that emerge from the ceiling. A divine Annunciation that isn’t answered, because the spirit announcing the birth of Christ gets the wrong timing and misses the appointment with the Virgin Mary.

Oliviero Fiorenzi uses the glass that divides the space from the tracks as a large copy paper, trying to stop the time and freeze the memory of the casual passage in front of the window, painting the surface.

The exhibition is called Amore2000, the first Italian word with the first letter of the alphabet that comes to mind, with an idea of ​​contemporaneity launched into a future that seems already passed. A title entrusted to the same lottery mechanism: chance.

Hannes Egger