KLUB NOIR

In mid-2020, the artists’ collective KLUB NOIR set out to radically renew the visual vocabulary of their creative outbursts in the urban context. Instead of drawings, self-made objects – collections of used materials, things found lying around or items bought in DIY stores – would now serve as the starting point to further develop their motifs. Working in 3D was their personal adaption of écriture automatique*, allowing them to break out of the stylistic limitations of their artistic roots which had “nourished but also annoyed”2 them. With this approach of taking used objects and transforming them into sculptures, the artists’ work is reminiscent of readymades and Arte Povera pieces. But unlike the semiotically charged materials of the latter art movement, KLUB NOIR do not want to convey content-related and political messages. For them it is much more about taking a playful, non-value-laden attitude to the materials which are selected according to aesthetic criteria such as texture, feel and colour quality, and juxtaposed with one another in an intriguing dialectic. In this way, nonchalant-appearing objects emerge in a “90’s trash meets ieweller” look – made from rubber gloves, sprayed Styrofoam, cat grass, melon slices and snow – at times highly polished like a fashion editorial, other times brash and showy, here sensitively and precisely composed and there trashy and in-your-face. They also reflect the character of KLUB NOIR, a group in which, thanks to a jointly determined creative framework, each artist can give their expression free rein in a form of collective individualism. Annalena Müller, July 2021.