CHRISTODOULOS PANAYIOTOU’s art is concerned with social concepts and practices of performance such as rituals and festivals. Frequently integrating video and sound into the framework of his install-
ations, he conceives thematic fields that remain open to fresh arrangement and reinterpretation at any time.
Panayiotou's exhibition in Studio 2 will be presented in two sections or phases: from 2 – 3 pm, it will be possible to hear the audio work “Prologue: Quoting Absence” in the almost emptied exhibition space; this is the first in a series of three pieces imitating a classic academic dissertation on the subject of ‘absence’. The 4-channel audio installation, which is always presented in an entirely empty room, is based on a recorded round of closed discussions on the subject of ‘absence’ held by four academics of different disciplines. The discussions were initiated and commissioned by the artist.
From 3 – 7 pm, Christodoulos Panayiotou will be showing a series of works entitled “The End” – this heralds a project to be completed in the Electoral Opera House in Bayreuth on 26th June 2009: there, the artist intends to replace the theatree’s historical backdrop with a deep black curtain for the duration of approximately one hour.
“Quoting Absence / The End” conveys a feeling of isolation and melancholy, so emphasising the aspect of ‘absence’ on which Christodoulos Panayiotouu’s artistic practice is focused.
Christodoulos Panayiotou holds a fellowship from UNDO Foundation, Cyprus, in the context of our International Studio Programme.

Christodoulos Panayiotou – "Prologue: Quoting Absence", "The End"
27th March – 12th April 2009, Studio 2
Opening: Thursday, 26th March 2009, from 7 pm

SARA HUGHES’s work investigates the visual impact of specific structures, codes and numbers on the viewer. In face of a flood of media ‘explainingg’ the world to us and simultaneously regulating it, she is particularly interested in visual structures that convey information and often adopt the form of statistical graphics in the media. In “Feedback Runaway” Hughes transforms the exhibition space into an image of our hectic age and its flood of visual stimuli. She takes her starting material – numerical statistics – from a range of sources, so that her brightly-coloured pie-charts painted onto canvas address and represent content as different as e.g. terror-statistics and a Cosmopolitan questionnaire.
Also painted onto canvas, her bar charts are precise realisations of actual stock-exchange indexes, which Hughes took from the economics section of the FAZ.
A pie-chart sculpture made of foam gives the visitor a place to sit, and diagrams made of coloured adhesive vinyl on the ceiling vie with line diagrams shooting in wild zigzags across the walls and floor like temperature graphs. These arbitrarily combined visual reproductions of sometimes important and sometimes trivial statistical content compete for the viewerr’s attention on equal terms here. However, “Feedback Runaway” is also about the messages and signals that are created through the interaction of colours and forms, and so Sara Hughes’ work also conveys reminders of the Bauhaus School; echoes of Kandinsky or paintings by Josef Albers.
Sara Hughes holds a fellowship from Creative New Zealand in the context of our International Studio Programme.

Sara Hughes – "Feedback Runaway"
27th March – 12th April 2009, Studio 3
Opening: Thursday, 26th March 2009, from 7 pm