Exhibitions

Timo Herbst Ephemera

• 2024.04.26(Fri)–05.25(Sat)
• Open Hours: Tue–Sat, 13:00-20:00
• Closed: Sun, Mon

KEN NAKAHASHI is pleased to present Timo Herbst’s solo exhibition, from Friday 26 April to Saturday 25 May 2024.

Timo Herbst

Born in Germany in 1982.

After studying philosophy and cultural studies at the University of Bremen, he studied art at the Leipzig Academy of Visual Arts. 

After having had fellowships by the German government at Cité internationale des Arts and french residency program Fiminco Foundation, he is currently based in Paris. 

Recent major exhibitions include 100% L'EXPO en plein air (Parc de La Villette Paris, 2023), Odysées Urbaines (Fiminco Foundation Paris/Romainville, 2023), Play by Rules (Kunsthalle Göppingen, Solo, 2023), The invisible thread (AVA Gallery, Cape Town, 2023), Play by Rules (LOAF Kyoto, Solo, 2022), Über die Zeichnung hinaus (Center of contemporary Art [ZAK], Berlin, 2022), Bühne Total (Bauhaus Museum Dessau, 2019), Rhythms (artothek – Museums Cologne, Solo, 2019).

His works are in the collections of the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Kunsthalle Göppingen, artothek Cologne, Bauhaus Museum Dessau, among others.

Herbst's interdisciplinary practice centers around selecting movement or choreography from artistic, everyday, and political spheres as a starting point for multimedia installations that include drawing, video, and sculpture. The artist's focus on the emergence of pertinent images of collective action and collective memory is linked to the use of gestural and physical forms of expression and their representation.

Drawing is an important practice for Herbst, especially as is has been produced since beginning of his career and is constantly evolving.

His drawings combine imagery from two different times and representations. Herbst says: "There are always at least two stories in each work, for the viewer to discover commonalities between each situation or event.”

His major drawing works include Gene. K (2010-11), which depicts the intricate movements of dancing feet, and Presto ma non assai (2011) and Fireworks (Tschaikowsky) (2011), which superimpose the hand movements of two conductors.

And Ephemera (2022-23) is a chronological drawing of gestures and historical representations based on newspapers, leaflets, posters and archives of German social and revolutionary movements between the 15th-20th centuries.

In this work, Herbst establishes a library of protest gestures to demonstrate how these movements can be communicated and manipulated by the medium of art, putting the viewer at the centre of the action.

The exhibition will comprise a selection of around 10 drawings from the early years as well as new drawings that expand his practice on Ephemera.