Anna Laudel is thrilled to announce their participation in SPARK 2024, between March 15th -17th, 2024, with special artworks from Cem Sonel and Anke Eilergerhard at Booth G13, Marx Halle, Karl-Farkas-Gasse 19, 1030 Vienna. Marked by its unique exhibition concept and by invitation only curatorial approach, SPARK VIENNA Art Fair advocates for a new art fair concept, addressing the challenges of the art market.
Based on a strong trust in art and the role of the galleries in the primary art market, SPARK Art Fair Vienna is the only international art fair focusing exclusively on solo presentations. This year, the curatorial concept of SPARK VIENNA ART FAIR is “The City in Dialogue” which has an emphasis on the liveliness of the city. As one of the most liveable cities in the world, Vienna has been a centre of attraction for national and international artists and those active in the arts, for several decades.
“SPARK 2024 specifically focuses on this wealth of artistic representation and Vienna as an artistic hub to other cities around the world,” explains curator Marina Fokidis.
For their booth at SPARK 2024, Anna Laudel has chosen two distinct artists working with very different media, whose work process is an ongoing investigation of the complexities of the human mind and psyche.
Cem Sonel, a semi-digital artist deeply engaged in the nexus of technology and philosophy, explores philosophical concepts of interdependence, where the binary states of on and off (numerically represented as 1 and 0) parallel the foundational role they play in the functionality of both algorithms and digital devices. The delicate balance between control and submission is an ongoing theme, artfully expressed through materials like plexiglass, stainless steel, LED screens, and mini computers running potent algorithms in works such as the Code of Conquer series.
As proposed by philosophers such as Derrida, one concept cannot exist without the other, much like in digital technology, the state of on and off determine the whole functionality of an algorithm and in turn a digital device. In this context, Sonel poses the same question he asks himself to the visitors:
“Don’t you think that in today’s mentality where 0 is accepted as nothingness, it is a more conciliatory approach to propose that 1 and 0 are the same values?”
Anke Eilergerhard in contrast, approaching art from a distinct perspective, is equally defined by her relentless pursuit of understanding human existence. Her work centers on the human experience of cravings, particularly in relation to food, and spans many years perfecting the representation of delight through the cream or icing atop confectionery and cakes. Through free-style, handcrafted reproductions in her sculptures, Eilergerhard captures the essence of insatiable desires, drawing attention to the ephemeral nature of humanly crafted perfection, mirroring the transient allure of the icing on a cake.
“My observations and experiences are the basis of all of my works. For me, it is about making things visible that I cannot put into words and that are nevertheless universal. A cake with a whipped cream top is a piece of heaven on earth. The whipped cream is for me the perfect sculptural form. It has something cosmic. It reflects the longing for paradise.” says Anke Eilergerhard.
Visitors can visit Anna Laudel’s special selection for SPARK 2024 at Booth G13, Marx Halle, Karl-Farkas-Gasse 19, 1030 Vienna from the 15th through the 17th of March 2024.
About Cem Sonel
A multidisciplinary artist, guerilla street hacker and semi-digital mediator, Cem Sonel also calls himself a mathematical observer. Having spent most of his life on the streets, he considers them his main production area. They constitute a major influential element in his earlier work.
Born in Ankara in 1985, Sonel completed his undergraduate education at Hacettepe University at the Faculty of Fine Arts, from which he received his degree in Graphic Design with Honors. In 2009 he co-founded the street art collective KÜF Project, thereby realizing a long-standing dream of his and the opportunity to keep working in the environment of his choice. The guerrilla street art actions the collective carried out between the years of 2009 and 2014 gained widespread attention both from the media as well as the urban population. Sonel was accepted into the Sculpture Master’s Program at Hacettepe University Fine Arts Institute in 2014.
After completing his studies, he moved his workshop to Izmir-Darağaç in 2017, continuing his own work as well as the activities with various street art collectives.
Sonel’s artworks have been exhibited in many national and international organizations and events such as Berlin Art Week, Contemporary Istanbul, Sónar Festival and 48 Stunden Neukölln. He organized workshops on street art in many universities of Turkiye and was invited to panels as a speaker. He also regularly hosted his own workshop sessions. He was the first artist in Turkey to exhibit a semi-digital mural, which he presented to the public at the mural arts festival in Istanbul. In 2022, he held his first solo exhibition titled “One and Zero Makes Two” at Anna Laudel Gallery in Istanbul. Integrating new media and digital art into street art has been the dominating theme in his work.
Since 2020, he has been continuing his art and design productions in his workshop in Ankara. He has recently been showcased at Art Cologne in the Collaborations section in 2023.
About Anke Eilergerhard
Berlin based artist Anke Eilergerhard works across a multitude of media, including painting, photography and video works, as well as sculpture. Her work is defined by her humorous artistic stance. She completed a degree in Communication Design in 1994 at the Bergische Universität in Wuppertal and moved to Berlin in 1999. She gained acclaim with her sculptures in recent years, many of which were acquired by museums and galleries worldwide. Skillfully Anke Eilergerhard plays with the boundaries of this particular medium, going sometimes in a more abstract direction and other times in a more figurative one.As if she was a “confesseuresse” or a “patisseuse “, she works the highly pigmented polyorganosiloxane (silicone) into the shapes of the “cream hoods”. Polyorganosiloxane, which is popular with DIY enthusiasts and plastic surgeons alike for its perfectly even surface, is also the perfect art material for the artist to create a synthetic image of an edible element of pastries we usually consider a special treat. Anke Eilergerhard’s artworks are exhibited and collected worldwide, including Abu Dhabi, Canada, Chile, China, Dubai, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, India, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, the Principality of Liechtenstein, Spain, South Africa, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States. Her sculptures are also to be found in the flagships stores of the brand Fendi in New York, Paris, Milan, Berlin, Dubai, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Rome and Shanghai.
About Anna Laudel Gallery
Anna Laudel, founded in 2012, has locations in the cities of Istanbul, Düsseldorf and Bodrum respectively. Since the gallery’s opening, Anna Laudel has developed a strong standing among leading dynamic contemporary art centres regionally and internationally and is representing a roster of artists with diverse social, cultural and educational backgrounds.
It is of importance to the gallery to maintain consistency in the diversity of the roster of artists represented, so as to reflect the many varying dynamics and developments of the contemporary art world. Following its first location in Istanbul, Anna Laudel opened its second gallery in Düsseldorf (Germany) in 2019 to further its international outreach. Soon after, in May 2022, a third gallery was inaugurated in Bodrum, in the district of Zai Yasam, allowing for yet another audience and an interesting location to host mostly solo exhibitions.