Structures and systems of order are the predominant themes of Berlin based artist Menno Aden (*1972, Weener), known for his cartographic photographic works. Aden's photo series deal topographically and analytically with our built environment. Although mostly absent, his works always show traces of the human being.
What looks like constructivist painting or colour compositions of the Hard Edge turns out, on closer inspection, to be vertically photographed sections of gymnasium floors. The patterns appear to have been composed from various playing field markings. Only in some pictures the pattern is covered by a torn piece of footfall sound insulation. The footfall sound insulation, which until recently still lay over the entire playing field - when up to 300 refugees found a shelter here.
Aden's photo series begins where the traces of the so-called refugee crisis are removed. It shows the reopened playing fields with their different game systems, which exist side by side without touching each other and which are shifted against each other by round bottom covers in playful carelessness - as if they were metaphors of the human cohabitation.
Exhibition view, Kunstraum Potsdam, 2017
The work "Untitled (Home-Guest)" is the exception in the series Composition. The view is not directed to the floor of the gym, but to the ceiling. A sports hall ceiling construction that appears protective and threatening at the same time; and unreal, since Aden photographed it from different positions and then digitally assembled it together - representative of the many eyes that once stared at the ceiling doubtfully or hopefully. On one wall, one sees a blackboard showing the score between 'Home' and 'Guest' - terms whose meanings are currently being renegotiated.