Ian Waelder: Zungen

In the organizer's words:

The exhibition Tongues by Ian Waelder is the third in the exhibition series for fear of continuity problems, which deals with memory and remembrance in a section of the GAK and the poster frames in the outdoor space.

Over the years, a child has repeatedly stood in front of the bookshelf at home - this is how a conversation that preceded Waelder's exhibition began. When he was still very small, he only had access to the lower books. The bigger the child grew, the more shelves and the more different books he could reach. In front of a bookshelf, you regularly stretch upwards or bend downwards to increase your reach. Knowledge and memory also have to do with reach, in terms of body and language. And the two are intertwined.

In Ian Waelder's exhibition there is a room with a low ceiling, a kind of box that you are allowed to enter. If you are too tall to walk in upright, you have to bend down to look at the photographs inside. They repeatedly show a plant whose growth they document over the years. The temporality that they capture and evoke is intimately linked to the artist himself. The plant was given to him by his mother on the day he was born. It has grown with him ever since.

Moments of repetition, which also play a role in the works for outdoor spaces, occur frequently in Waelder's works. Seemingly random objects or images that he has found or that have been given to him are given a continuity that expands their meaning. Part of this repetition is an insistence that seeks to grasp what is present but also hidden. On the wall in the outdoor space, on which thirteen poster frames normally hang, a series of sculptures juts out into the path of passers-by. They are based on a shoe last that continually appears in Waelder's works. Like the ashtray next to the entrance of the GAK, these objects offer themselves as a container for something that is kept or put away, creating space for slightly unconscious and everyday contact.

Memory is central to Ian Waelder's work. He interweaves objects, images and spaces in a complex way to create carriers of memories and attitudes. His modifications of spaces, the corners you turn, the sculptures, images and sounds you encounter are all containers for a knowledge that is not fully accessible. But they are also an invitation to make connections to a personal history, which in turn is linked to a history that goes beyond it.
The title Tongues perhaps refers to this pre-linguistic moment of an "it's-on-my-tongue experience" in which conscious memory fails. A word you know is almost about to come out but cannot be uttered or achieved, a leap in time occurs. It is said that this phenomenon is linked to emotions and the stronger they are, the more difficult it is to find the memory of the word.

About the artist
Ian Waelder (* 1993) graduated from the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main in 2023, where he studied as a master student under Prof. Haegue Yang. He is currently a scholarship holder of the Laurenz-Haus Foundation in Basel (2025/26). His most recent solo exhibitions include the Kestner Gesellschaft (Hanover, 2025), carlier | gebauer (Berlin, 2025) and Es Baluard Museu d'Art Contemporani (Palma, 2023-24). Group exhibitions have taken place in institutions and galleries such as Kunsthalle Wien (Vienna), ifa Galerie (Berlin), nsdoku (Munich), Petrine (Paris), Fundació Antoni Tàpies (Barcelona), Delfina Foundation (London), Francis Irv (New York), Nassauischer Kunstverein (Wiesbaden) and La Casa Encendida (Madrid), among others.

He was artist-in-residence at WIELS - Center for Contemporary Art (Brussels, 2024) and received scholarships, including the basis Hessisches Atelier Program (2025-29), the DZ BANK Kunststiftung Förderstipendium (2023-24) and the Städelschule Portikus e.V. Graduation Prize (2023).

Price information:

2€ reduced admission