06.05.–25.06.2000

With Jim Isermann, Portikus will celebrate its 100th exhibition!

Jim Isermann (b. 1955) lives in Santa Monica, CA. His works can be described as a synthesis of art and design.

Due to their utility value, his spatial installations and individual objects can always also be defined as interior or furniture. Isermann has also utilised original furniture from the 50s and 60s and created his own carpet and wallpaper patterns for his spatial designs. The objects, mostly hand-woven and self-made, define themselves by their materiality, colourfulness and ornamentality.

Jim Isermann will cover the floor and walls of Portikus with a pattern consisting of different but very similar elements. He will use reflecting silver foil. The space in his architecture will thus become uniform and dissolve, as it were.

Jim Isermann has also used the pattern he chose for the invitation card and poster.

The artist conceived this work specially for Portikus. Last year, Jim Isermann already realized a wall work in the Magazin, Centre National d'Art Contemporain in Grenoble using patterns made of foil. This method allows him to plan a complicated and work-intensive piece from Los Angeles for a specific exhibition site.

As in Grenoble, Jim Isermann is concerned at Portikus, too, with the question of how elements in a pattern can be repeated while simultaneously changing their direction. "I'm not interested in an arbitrary pattern; for me it is extremely important how stringently the individual elements are repeated."