Kunstraum La Felce, Cologne
27.05. – 27.06.2020
Mi-Sa | 11-19 Uhr || Soft Opening Sa 30.05. 11-21 Uhr
Positionen von Marco Zumbé und Thomas Zika

A sculpture doesn’t occupy a room, usually it is creating it. At first you can’t imagine this when you are looking at Marco Zumbé’s work as the canvas blind is occupying the entire exhibition room. It is not hanging outside over the shop window, it is hanging inside the exhibition room. However, once you start looking at the canvas, you are approaching its layers, grids and lines – everything seems to be in motion, a bit undisciplined and wild – and you soon get a feeling for its harmonious and rhythmical condition. A condition that leaves enough room for playfully plunging into the matrix and surfaces and appear again in a different position somewhere else.
Neither Marco Zumbé’s work nor the meaning of the defintion of sculpture at the beginning of this text describe a physical room. However, both the narrowness as well as the position of the canvas blind leave room for further interpretation. Influenced by the two current crisis (Corona virus and climate) there is even more room for interpretation or the other way round – the interpretation can lead to these two themes. In fact the lockdown is loosening right now. One can visit beer gardens or cafés again under canvas blinds, even public pools are open again. However, due to the position of Marco Zumbé’s work and the irritation resulting from it one can still feel the lockdown or can clearly remember it.

Thomas Zika’s work Vertical Pools is presenting itself clearly, calmly and resolutely – one can even call it „straight“. Travelling along the Route Nationale in France, one can’t miss these huge bathtubs. It seems they are randomly positioned into the landscape, almost surreal, and therefore these vertical pools present themselves with an incredible sculptural potential. The shapes of the pools vary from classical rectangular to embryo like and rectangular rounded down shapes.

We sat in Thomas Zika’s studio in summer 2019 and were talking about his pools again. The new high temperature records in France that were rising ever higher in various places in the country (new all-time record of 45,9 degrees in Gallargues-le-Montueux near Montpellier) had a massive impact on our conversation. At that time Greta was peparing her sailing trip over the Atlantic. The start on 21st September was already noted in the diary. The idea arose quickly to present the photos Vertical Pools that were shot between 2007 and 2009 as part of an exhibition concept that is dealing with the topic climate change.