NIKLAS GOLDBACH
THE PARADISE MACHINE


16.3.2024 - 1.9.2024 (extended)
HMKV Hartware MedienKunstVerein Dortmund
Curated by Inke Arns

 

EXHIBITION VIEWS
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PUBLICATION (Download)

The exhibition magazine as a free bilingual PDF can be downloaded here –
the printed version is available on site at the HMKV bookshop and can be
ordered via Verlag Kettler.

Editor: Inke Arns
Texts: Inke Arns, Iris Dressler
Design: Ten Ten Team, Dortmund
Photography: Exhibition views: Roland Baege
Works: Niklas Goldbach
Year:; 2024
Language: German, English, German "Einfache Sprache"
Translation: Patrick Boris Kremer (Englisch)
Martin Conze (Einfache Sprache)
Format:17 x 24 cm, 168 pages
Publisher: Kettler, Dortmund
ISBN: 978 3 98741 126 7

 

EXHIBITED WORKS


 

1. 1550 SAN REMO DRIVE
Video, 18:00 min, HD Video, Stereo, 2017


Photo: Roland Baege

 

2. INTO THE PARADISE MACHINE
Video Installation, UHD Video, Stereo, 55:00 min, 2022/23



Photo: Roland Baege

 

3. TODAY ON LUMEN 2000
Video, duration variable, NTSC Transfer to PAL Video, Stereo, 2024


Photo: Roland Baege

 

4. THE WORLD
Video Loop, 13:00 min, HD Video, silent, 2012


Photo: Roland Baege

 

5. A DATE WITH DESTINY
Video, 18:45 min, HD Video, Stereo, 2019


Photo: Roland Baege

 

6. PARADISE NOW
2-Channel video Installation for 4K Projection and Discoball, 40:00 min, UHD Video, Stereo, 2024


Photo: Roland Baege

 

7. PERMANENT DAYLIGHT
Digital pigment prints on Photo Archive Paper, 76 x 50 cm, framed, presented in fixed constellations ('Groups'), 2013 - ongoing

"Day 7", Group from the series “Permanent Daylight”, 76,4 x 176,6 cm, 2024
3 Digital Pigment Prints on Photo Archive Paper, 75 x 50 cm, individually framed


"Greetings from”, Group from the series “Permanent Daylight”, 76,4 x 176,6 cm, 2024
3 Digital Pigment Prints on Photo Archive Paper, 75 x 50 cm, individually framed


"In Between Days”, Group from the series “Permanent Daylight”, 76,4 cm x 113,6 cm, 2024
2 Digital Pigment Prints on Photo Archive Paper, 75 x 50 cm, individually framed


"The Killing Moon”, Group from the series “Permanent Daylight”, 76,4 x 367,2 cm, 2024
6 Digital Pigment Prints on Photo Archive Paper, 75 x 50 cm, individually framed



"Posterity”, Group from the series “Permanent Daylight”, 76,4 x 304 cm, 2024
5 Digital Pigment Prints on Photo Archive Paper, 75 x 50 cm, individually framed

 

8. A STATE OF HAPPINESS

Mixed Media Installation, 12 Digital Prints on chipboard, cable straps, 6 metal hoardings
Installation size: 200 x 350 x 70 cm (Chipboard: 128,9 x 94,1 cm x 0,5 cm / Print size: 118,9 x 84,1 cm)

 

PERFORMANCES

INTO THE PARADISE MACHINE
Video Screening & Lecture Performance with Live Score by Schneider TM, ca. 70 minutes
HMKV im Dortmunder U, Cinema, 23.05.2024
Curated by Inke Arns
Photos : Ermine Ercihan

NTO THE PARADISE MACHINE
Video Screening & Lecture Performance, Stereo, 55 min, 2022/23
Saalbau Witten, 09.08.2024
Photos : Daniel Sadrowski

 

PROGRAMM FLYER
Download pdf

 

HMKV WEBSITES

DE: https://www.hmkv.de/ausstellungen/ausstellungen-detail/niklas-goldbach-the-paradise-machine.html
EN: https://www.hmkv.de/exhibition/exhibition-detail/niklas-goldbach-the-paradise-machine-en.html

 

EXHIBITION VIDEO


https://vimeo.com/929784843

 

PRESS REVIEWS

“The exhibition at the HMKV presents the promises of salvation of this well-oiled ideological paradise machine in neutral and thus reveals its repressed historical-materialistic flipside in all its brutal banality.” Thorsten Schneider, KUNSTFORUM International, Vol. 297 August 2024
link to article

“This desolate landscape in which Goldbach’s photographs—either framed or fixed on soft board—act as interior decor or outdoor messages is disturbing enough, even more so when we realize that it’s pristine. It lacks any trace of past human presence and feels like a social experiment in the making.” Krzysztof Kosciuczuk in Camera Austria, Nr. 166
link to article

Daniela Berglehn: 'What is paradise for you? Niklas Goldbach: 'That's difficult. I think we look for the untouched, we feel that the unshaped is a paradise. But there is always the desire to create. And great things are created. It's a dilemma. The longing, it doesn't stop.'” (03 April 2024Daniela Berglehn in conversation with Niklas Goldbach, Monopol Magazin)
link to article

“It‘s clever how he puts a work from 2022 about the Center Parcs, which are widely spread throughour Europe, into the focus of the exhibition. [...] Goldbach‘s perspective remains neutral, but in all works it becomes apparent that there‘s a fine line between Utopia and Dystopia.” kunst:art Nr. 15, May/June 2024

“For a while now, Schneider has been doing soundtracks for movies as well, and for that reason the choice was very simple to include him into the the video work “INTO THE PARADISE MACHINE”.” Niklas Goldbach‘s interview with kaput-Magazin (29 April 2024, kaput)

“Utopia meets Dystopia. The exhibition poetically stages the correlation between high-level aims and inevitable decay.” (08 April 2024, trailer ruhr)

“Goldbach explores resorts all over the world with his camera. [...] But the bitter realization of the exhibition is this: paradise can neither be bought nor be built.” (08 April 2024, WAZ)

“Paradise is a building site - at least that's the impression that visitors to the new exhibition by Hartware MedienKunstVerein (HMKV) in Dortmund's U Construction fences and palm trees line an exhibition route consisting of wobbly walls. And paradise? It stands on at least as shaky a foundation. [...]Goldbach's paradise is a paradise without a net and with a false bottom.” (31 March 2024, Nordstadtblogger)

“Paradise is empty because the season hasn't started yet. The Center Parcs bungalows lie deserted under bare winter trees. The camera moves across the standardised facades, later through the standardised bedrooms and kitchens. This is what the tourism industry's promise of happiness looks like.” (26 March 2024, Westfälischer Anzeiger)

“The artist, who was born in Witten in 1973 and now lives in Berlin, deals with the beautiful but also dark sides of architecture in his photographic and video works and has also designed the exhibition architecture on the third floor.” (21 March 2024, Ruhrnachrichten)

"How do people imagine paradise? If we leave out the biblical idea of the Garden of Eden for a moment, a South Sea island with a blue sea and white sandy beach will certainly often appear in the mind's eye. In his work "A State of Happiness", Niklas Goldbach takes real images from the real bathing landscapes of Center Parcs and lets an artificial intelligence (AI) process the images. Surprisingly, the AI quickly turns the paradisiacal dream into a ruin. Decay is apparently always included in the calculation." (16 March 2024, Ars Tremonia)

Niklas Goldbach’s The Paradise Machine might be read as an image-based study of how objects define the dreams and ambitions of both today’s users and their past makers. The main protagonists of the exhibition are half-finished structures and lonely, discarded edifices, depicted in razor sharp photographs and slowly unwinding video works. Their human owners and caretakers are absent: their voices – mediated through quotations from diaries and letters – being the sole, faint traces of their activity. Who constructs whom in this dynamic? (Most Magazine / mostmagazine.org)