Lucas Arruda’s oeuvre comprises paintings, graphics, light installations, slide projections, and films. It reflects an intense examination of a wide range of themes—from the conceptual framework of painting to the existential conditions of life. Arruda pays particular attention to the depiction of landscapes and seascapes, although these never refer to specific places. Instead, the artist is concerned with the thoughts and memories that certain localities evoke, exploring their lighting conditions, atmospheres, and emotions to produce imaginary images. From June 6 to September 8, 2019, the Fridericianum presented Deserto-Modelo, Arruda’s first institutional survey show in Germany, conceived especially for Kassel. The accompanying publication of the same title offers a multifaceted art historical and cultural contextualization of Arruda’s work, an exploration of its philosophical dimensions, and detailed documentation of the exhibition.

Lucas Arruda’s oeuvre comprises paintings, graphics, light installations, slide projections, and films. It reflects an intense examination of a wide range of themes—from the conceptual framework of painting to the existential conditions of life. Arruda pays particular attention to the depiction of landscapes and seascapes, although these never refer to specific places. Instead, the artist is concerned with the thoughts and memories that certain localities evoke, exploring their lighting conditions, atmospheres, and emotions to produce imaginary images. From June 6 to September 8, 2019, the Fridericianum presented Deserto-Modelo, Arruda’s first institutional survey show in Germany, conceived especially for Kassel. The accompanying publication of the same title offers a multifaceted art historical and cultural contextualization of Arruda’s work, an exploration of its philosophical dimensions, and detailed documentation of the exhibition.

With texts by Paulina Pobocha and Moritz Wesseler.

On November 3, 2020, Trisha Baga illuminated the facade of the Fridericianum in Kassel with HOPE, a film produced especially for the occasion. The work is a reflection on the state of our world today and, more specifically, a commentary on the US presidential election that took place on the same date. Baga’s film reflects the markedly contrasting events, conditions, and moods of the present moment, which combine to form a new sense of unity within the work. The result is an echoing declaration in which, like in most of the artist’s works, the boundaries between film, painting, sculpture, and architecture, between the work of art and its surroundings, blur. The relevance of Baga’s themes was underscored through the presentation of HOPE as a widely visible illumination, giving rise to a resounding call for both hope and action. 

The artist’s book Full House is based on a new series of drawings by Keren Cytter, who was born in 1977 in Tel Aviv. The images depict the interior of apartments in Netanya, Lausanne, and New York, in which the artist and writer lived between 2020 and 2022. Cytter used a variety of felt-tips to make the drawings, which are composed like puzzles, but here the pieces do not seem to quite fit together. In this way, the view into the everyday life of Cytter, which is not least reminiscent of the tradition of diaries, is regularly undermined.