Cosar HMT, Düsseldorf
Erika Hock
Salon Tactile is the title of a series of installation works consisting of printed string curtains. They are roughly three meters long and hang circularly from the ceiling.
Given their both optic and haptic qualities, they form an accessible space with an ambivalent status somewhere between object and image, which visitors will receive in vastly different ways. The string curtains will define a round and semi-transparent room within the room of the rectilinear fair booth as an object and, at once, a display. Situated here will be Erika Hock’s work, whose formal language is to be located somewhere between autonomous sculpture and furniture object.
The entire installation Salon Tactile forms a wide system of references to Mies van der Rohe and Lilly Reich’s pioneering notion of the open fair booth. The concept emerged from the piece Cafe Samt und Seide (Velvet and Silk Cafe), which the two designed for the 1927 exhibition ‘Die Mode der Dame’ (Women’s Fashion) at the new exhibition halls under Berlin’s radio tower. The fluid diffusion zones between fashion, design, and art are characteristic of Erika Hock’s artistic practice and her works.