FORT
Night Shift
Oct 27th, 2018 – Jan 27th, 2019
Kunstverein in Hamburg, Hamburg
The FORT collective, Alberta Niemann (*1982 in Bremen) and Jenny Kropp (*1978 in Frankfurt am Main), creates subtle other-worldly scenes in their works. Wavering between poetic, humorous and eerie moments, FORT’s installations often play with the feeling of emptiness and abandonment. The two artists use adapted everyday objects that open up a field of tension between recognition and disconcertment in the exhibition space.
In Night Shift, FORT deal with the themes of night and darkness. The rooms on the ground floor of the Kunstverein are illuminated only by the artworks themselves. The title has a twofold meaning: On the one hand, the period of work during the night and thus the appropriation of a time of day that was once reserved for peace and quiet. Only with the invention of electric light in the 19th century did it become possible to utilize the night in the frame of industrialization for productivity, but also for entertainment. On the other hand, the title plays with the words “night” and “shift” and thus marks a space of transition between the rationality of day and the magic of darkness imbued with longings and dreams.
The exhibition is a coproduction with Casino Luxemburg and is made possible by the friendly support of the Department of Culture and Media of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg, the Hamburgische Kulturstiftung and the Leinemann-Stiftung für Bildung und Kunst.
Since 2008 Jenny Kropp and Alberta Niemann have been working together as the artist collective FORT (until 2013 with Anna Jandt). Kropp studied at the Hochschule für Künste Bremen and Niemann completed her studies at the Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg. In 2016, the collective received the Hessian Cultural Foundation's studio fellowship in New York and the Karl Schmidt-Rottluff Fellowship in 2012. In 2014, FORT won the Art Cologne Award for New Positions. FORT was represented in many exhibitions, including the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, the KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, Langen Foundation, Neuss, and the Kestnergesellschaft in Hanover.
