The glamorous and stylish VOGUE covers meet dark and often terrifying characters from horror films and the world of science fiction.

Vogue by Esther Hunziker

Esther Hunziker is a media artist from Switzerland whose work focuses on the interface between art, technology and society. She is known for her experimental and innovative projects, which often include digital media and interactive elements. In Vogue cover creatures, she raises questions about identity, beauty, consumer culture and even the boundaries between reality and fiction. By weaving these disparate elements together, Hunziker invites viewers to reflect on the multi-layered relationships between different aspects of our culture and society.

The work is offered as an artist's book for free download. This reflects Hunziker's approach of making art accessible to all and removing the barriers to accessing artistic works. These "electrfd e-books" are not only creative forms of expression, but also a means of democratizing art.

More at: www.electrfd.net

Refuge

By definition, denotes a place of refuge and rest

In postmodern art and culture, refuge can be interpreted in different ways. On the one hand, it can represent a concept of refuge from the challenges and uncertainties of the modern world. On the other hand, the refuge can also serve as a metaphor for a return to traditional values and ideals, as a counter-reaction to the technological and social acceleration of modernity

In the current exhibition, digital technology, contemporary media and handcrafted art design engage in a creative dialog between the past and the future. Found footage meets object art - found video clips and film material and the use of old objects and new materials come together, are collaged and initiate a dialog between past and future. The supposedly familiar is called into question. Reacting to and reflecting on social changes and aesthetic norms

How do we want to live? What do we want to surround ourselves with?

In her works, Stephanie Apel combines original handcrafted pieces, such as artistically carved chair backs, knotted tapestries and fabrics, with modern furniture and contrasts them with one another. By bringing these pieces of interior design together, not only is the quality and production method of these pieces critically examined, but also the question of existing, or rather, new furniture is raised.

The video works of Angelika Haak have a contemplative character and allow in their formal reduction a concentration on the essential. The focus is on the human being, his ideas of normative ideals and ways of thinking. In her art work Angelika Haak investigates the construction and deconstruction of identities. An essential feature of her work is the detachment of subjects and objects from their spatial and social context.

Around the Kunstroute Aachen 2023 the LA Token Gallery shows works of the media artists Iris Hoppe and Angelika Haak.

The exhibition ¿Balance? by Iris Hoppe starts on Saturday, August 26, 2023 with finissage on the first day of Kunstroute, Saturday, September 23, 2023.

The exhibition changes on Sunday, September 24, the second day of the art route to Angelika Haak's vernissage and exhibition Inbild: Beständigkeit der immer gleichen Andersartigkeit. The works are then on display until 22.10.2023.

Inbild - Consistency of the always same otherness

The video works of Angelika Haak have a contemplative character and allow in their formal reduction a concentration on the essential. The focus is on the human being, his ideas of normative ideals and ways of thinking. In her art work Angelika Haak investigates the construction and deconstruction of identities. An essential feature of her work is the detachment of subjects and objects from their spatial and social context.

Angelika Haak's work derives its fundamental intensity from symmetry and formal rigor. The video installations have a contemplative character. The vertical or time-based repetition of actions, images, and forms, in their reduction of content and form, forces a focus and concentration on the essential.

¿Balance?
Iris Hoppe deals with various conceptual issues concerning the exploration of boundaries that are mental or spatial in nature, between people, art spaces and artistic productions. By combining the specific properties of digital and analog media - video, photography, drawing and audio elements - she links different levels of perception. With the performative installations "Sense of Balance" she directs her critical gaze at the social complexity of being out of balance. In her first NFT series "move in balance (red - yellow - blue)" she conveys to us in a dance video the limitations of the body and those of (digital) space simultaneously. 

Iris Hoppe graduated from the Gerrit Rietveld Academy Amsterdam in 1996. She deepened her knowledge of film and sound postproduction at the RTL Media School and now lives and works in the Cologne area.

Her works have been exhibited in Berlin (Galerie Hohenthal and Bergen), Düsseldorf (IMAI inter media art institute), Cologne (Luther Kirche), Aachen (Raum für Gäste), Bonn (Trinitatiskirche), Leverkusen (Kunstverein Leverkusen Schloss Morsbroich e.V.), Wolfsburg (VW Autostadt), among others.

NATURE - The relationship between man and nature has always been a theme in art. The LA Token Gallery presents three positions of this debate - current, critical, timeless.

Matthias Luggen - no snow

Matthias Luggen was born in Switzerland and lives in the Bern area. He has been working as an independent photographer since 2014. His main focus is portrait photography, editorial, reportage and architecture. He publishes regularly in various magazines and newspapers.  

Matthias Luggen says about his work " no snow" itself: "Winters in the Swiss mountains are becoming increasingly warmer, snowfall is decreasing and the snow cover is thinning. Grasses and flowers, which should be covered by a thick blanket of snow, appear defenceless and exhausted under the pale winter sun. Hidden things become visible, cautiously revealing what we have refused to see for too long: The vast changes we impose on nature."

Maria Blaisse - Moving Meshes

Maria Blaisse, born in the Netherlands graduated from the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam in 1968. She then worked in the design studio of Jack Lenor Larsen in New York and went on to research traditional textile techniques and natural dyeing of fibers in South America.

Her projects can be understood as sculptures or costumes. In many cases, it is difficult to determine who is in control: the body or the form. Blaisse moves between the disciplines of art, design, textiles, and fashion like few other artists. Her work is an exploration of form and materials, especially including natural materials such as cork and bamboo. The results can be seen in theater, on the catwalk, and in art galleries.

Her works have been exhibited in Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, Berlin, Amsterdam (Stedelijk Museum, Platform21, Gallery Binnen, Gallery Ra), Leerdam (International Glassmuseum), Pica Perth (Institute of Contemporary Arts), Flexible Pan European Art (Austria, Poland, NL and UK), 's-Hertogenbosch (Het Kruithuis), London (Craftsmuseum), Kyoto (International Textile Exhibition), Paris (Grand Palais), Stockholm (Kulturhuset), Trondheim (Museum of Applied Arts), Brussels (Galerie Neon), Lausanne (Biennale International de la Tapisserie).

Her work has been published in leading international design books and magazines, including Selvedge (UK), ITEMS (NL), ELLE WONEN (NL), Techniques & Architecture (F), Abitare (I), Techno Textiles (UK), Issey Miyake (J), Imitation and Inspiration (NL/J), Industrieel ontwerpen (NL), "Interlacing" (US), "The Art Fabric; Mainstream" (US).

Her work has received several awards and nominations including: Emmy van Leersum, Design Preis Schweiz, Rotterdam Designprize, Dutch Ministry of Economic and Cultural Affairs, Oggetti per Domus.

LA Token Gallery, in consultation with Maria Blaisse, is showing Moving Meshes from 2008 as a video.

Memo Akten: Waves 2.0

Memo Akten, born in Istanbul lives and works in London. He describes himself as a "Curious Philomath, Artist, Musician, Researcher, AI Whisperer." He completed his PhD at Goldsmiths University in London on artificial intelligence and expressive human-machine interaction to enable collaborative creativity between humans and machines.

Akten received the Prix Ars Electronica Golden Nica in 2013 for his work "Forms." He has exhibited internationally and has been represented at venues such as the Grand Palais, the Barbican, the Royal Opera House, the ZKM Center for Art and Media, the Sonar Festival, the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, the Shanghai Ming Contemporary Art Museum, and many others. His work has been featured in major publications such as Wired, The Guardian, Dazed, Nowness, and The Financial Times, and he has collaborated with prominent figures such as Lenny Kravitz, U2, Depeche Mode, and Professor Richard Dawkins. He has been a mentor and juror for numerous international awards, residencies, and conferences including SIGGRAPH, Ars Electronica, and Google Arts and Culture.

LA Token Gallery will be showing NFT Waves 2.0 from its own collection.

This is the first work in a new branch of a long series of works centered around the theme of "waves" - from ocean waves to sound waves to quantum field waves to social and political waves ... and now to waves in the Earth's crust, slow-motion waves on geological time scales, and mountains. The work was created using a number of different AI (artificial intelligence) techniques.

After the devastating earthquake on February 6, 2023 in Turkey, and Syria, Memo files donated 100% of the proceeds from initial sales to rescue and relief efforts.

Come and see!

As the first highlight of 2023 and a continuation of the textile theme, LA Token Gallery will present a show of art works by Swiss-born artist Eveline Cantieni titled "Lace Pieces" from Jan. 14 - March 11, 2023. Eveline Cantieni researches textile crafts of the past. In her installations and videos, she combines modern media and traditional handicrafts such as crochet, embroidery and knitting techniques. She plays with a lot of humor, with terms that contain social conventions and besides she archives a lot of past knowledge of small handicrafts in her digital works.

www.evelinecantieni.ch

Following on from the once internationally important cloth industry in Aachen, the LA Token Gallery will be showing works by the artist sisters Ulrike Halmschlager and Andrea Maxa Halmschlager from November 19 to December 31, 2022 under the title "COTTON SILK DIGITAL".


Ulrike Halmschlager lives and works in Salzburg. Already as a child she was fascinated by photography and never let it go. She studied at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna. After working as a camerawoman for television, she now creates the design for fabrics, clothing, bags and carpets. Digitally processed photographs always serve as the basis for the color-intensive designs.
In Aachen, for the very first time, she is showing a mixed media exhibition titled "MY MOTHER'S BAG", in which video and digital images are exhibited together with nylon shopping bags. In it, she references a tapestry bag made by her mother Ilse in the 1960s that is closely tied to her own story. As was the case for many women at that time, handicrafts such as knitting, sewing and embroidery were part of Ilse's everyday life.  Thus, her mother certainly laid the foundation for the sisters' work today.


Andrea Maxa Halmschlager lives and works in Vienna and in Laub near Regensburg. She studied at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna and at the Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam. Since September 2019, a new series of works with necklaces, brooches and ear jewelry is being created. The title "ANTHOZOA" is borrowed from the class of floral animals. Sea anemones and sea feathers belong to it. They are stuck at the bottom of the sea during their whole life. Living singly or colonially, as clones with or without skeletons, many of them form polyps moved by the water. These works are inspired by the richness of color and form of these creatures, as well as their elegant movements in the water. The works also incorporate fabrics from her sister. La Token Gallery is showing photos of these fascinating creations.