"Warum verlieben wir uns immer in die fiesen Jungs?? (Why do we always fall in love with bad boys??)"

11 November 2017–14 January 2018

The artist duo Nicola Gördes and Stella Rossié have created a large-scale video installation for the Galerie der Gegenwart, screening firstly the video “KOMET” (2014), and subsequently the newly produced video “2017 – The chicks would dig it and we’d get laid a lot” (2017). Instead of using the exhibition space as a simple black box for the presentation of video works, the artists have integrated the existent architecture of the space’s transparent display window into their artistic strategy, with “night” and all its diverse connotations emerging as a meta-theme. The video projection is conceived for viewing not only from inside, but also at any time of the day or night when standing outside in front of the display window. The interior, the exhibition space’s walls painted “smoked oak” to match the seating, functions both in the conventional sense as a display for the video works and as a kind of nightclub. A functional duplication of exhibition space and club facilities is enhanced by an interactive element: a range of merchandise for the fictional band “2017”, which the second is about, will be sold at a merchandise stand at specific times. It is a fragment of a counter design by architects modulorbeat, originally developed for the exhibition Skulptur Projekte 2017. By this momentum the artists address the film’s issues of club culture and fan cults. “KOMET” depicts the club of the future: toilet attendant, bouncer and bag security personnel as well as neon lighting representing stereotypical elements of a nightclub, in which however music has been replaced by only a dull bass tone. As the last guest at the club, a party photographer appears, determining the rhythm of the night with the clicking of his flash trigger. Gördes and Rossié, who always also appear in their own videos, capture snapshots of differing social milieus without adhering to a linear narrative structure. Their depictions bear a distinctive power of observation, which at the same time cast a critical eye on social phenomena. In the video “KOMET” the artists delineate a kind of near future vision of party culture – shot in 2014, but meant to be set in 2017. However, “2017 – The chicks would dig it and we’d get laid a lot” on the other hand depicts a distant past, which is idealised in the individual memories of those involved. The new video is receiving its premiere at the Galerie der Gegenwart on 15 December and screening at the space until the end of the exhibition. It employs a pseudo-documentary style to address the myth of “bands”, their frequently fleeting popularity and the associated excessive behaviour of their fans.


Nicola Gördes (born in 1986 in Lennestadt) has been studying Fine Art under Aernout Mik at the Kunstakademie Münster since 2012 as well as under Marcel Odenbach at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf since 2014.

Stella Rossié (born in 1989 in Bochum) studied Visual Art under Andreas Slominski and Ceal Floyer at the HfbK Hamburg. Gördes and Rossié began collaborating in 2013, subsequently jointly creating five films. “汤 Supbar”, their most recent exhibition at Galerie Jürgen Becker, was the artists’ debut solo exhibition. In 2017 they were represented in New Positions at Art Cologne.

In 2015 Gördes and Rossié were awarded the DEW art award, and in 2014 the Hiscox art price.

The exhibition is curated by Jenni Henke and Marijke Lukowicz.

_{Photos: 
Nicola Gördes and Stella Rossié, "2017", self-timer
Installation views by LWL/Anne Neier and Roland Baege}