A Silverbridge Project, “Transcontinental Nomadenoase”.
The Galerie Nomadenoase is a one-to-one replica of an existing gallery space situated in the Golden Pudel Club in Hamburg/St. Pauli. True to scale, the replica is no bigger than 80 square feet complete with traces of time, life, smoke and drink. The Golden Pudel Club is probably the best known German nightclub of the nineties. The Gallery has existed since the club‚s opening in 1993, when a few new German rockbands (collectively known as the Hamburg School) and many young artists, chose the Pudel Club as their hangout. In the beginning the little gallery space was used to hold exhibitons of semi-famous members of the scene, strictly non-artists (including Diedrich Diederichsen, Jochen Distelmeier and Isabelle Graw) who were coerced into producing drawings, paintings, photos, orconceptual projects (basically some type of art). Openings were held every second Monday night, from ten pm till five am. In 1996 Monday night at the Pudel Club was taken over by the Akademie Isotrop which resulted in the gallery becoming their exhibition space. Until 2000, this wildcat academy (about 30 members including artists André Butzer, Birgit Megerle, Daniel Richter, Jonathan Meese and many others) organized exhibtions for the space. When Isoptrop disbanded, various former members kept the gallery alive. The space became a role model for many of the off-spaces that opened up within the Hamburg art scene. In 2004, the gallery was replicated by Lutz Krüger, a Hamburg based artist, who appropriated it as a free standing sculpture and a portable exhibition space: Galerie Nomadenoase. Due to its unique nature, the sculpture is both an object and a platform for organized exhibitions (like other artist-run off-spaces, exhibitions held within the gallery are announced by invitation cards and begin with opening night festivites). Galerie Nomadenoase first traveled to Paris in October 2004, where it gained significance as a sculpture/exhibition space housing exhibtions by various artists (including Guy Debord, Raymond Pettibon, Jason Rhodes, Andreas Hofer and Shlag). In April 2005 it moved to London where it played its appropriate role within the hip London underground art/fashion scene (for example, British artist Mick Peter exhibited in the space). Two months later the Galerie Nomadenoase was moved to the Museum der Moderne Salzburg, Austria, as part of the exhibition Les Grands Spectacles. In October Galerie Nomadenoase was send on its way to Wonder Valley, California, in the Mojave Desert, where it will be shown as a project produced by Silverbridge Editions. It will be constructed in a new transportable form, in a former reefer trailer (an enclosed semi-truck trailer), a self-contained construction housing the gallery space, a lounge, a bookshop and a multimedia center. This extended incarnation, now called Transcontinental Nomadenoase will be transported across the United States and open its doors in Miami during the art fair as a multidimensional sculpture. Daily, it will house independently curated exhibitions (we are in contact with several artists, including taeglichdigital, André Butzer, Andreas Hofer, Charlet Kugel, Zlatan Vukosavljevic, Paul McCarthy, Véronique Bourgoin, Una Szeemann to contribute to the gallery‚s program).The construction, transport and events related to Transcontinental Nomadenoase will be documented and edited, preserved as short films to be added to the existing archived history of the sculpture.
