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The question of whether the call from inside the trouser pocket was coincidence or fate, willing us to be exactly the person called, remains unanswered and in the end, it doesn’t really matter. Spengemann’s Pocket Call prompts the observer to think about the tension between technical feasibility and chaotic chance. In his works, Spengemann negotiates subjects that elude technical and industrial reproduction (e.g. life itself, the universe, chance), but does so by hyper – technical means. He builds replicas of mistakes, connects pixels to make polygons, which then become specks of dust, threads, or bits of fluff, which condense in the dark cavern of a trouser pocket. In this way, he re-asks the fundamental ontological question of what substance the world is really made of and how in this materialist perspective anything new can emerge – without retreating into esotericism and metaphysics.
Paul Spengemann studied film and fine art with AngelaSchanelec and Andreas Slominski at the Hochschule für bildende Künste, Hamburg and was a scholarship holder at Goldsmiths, University of London in 2016. Spengemann was awarded the Bundespreis für Kunststudierende 2016/2017 as well as the Art Cologne Award for New Positions in 2017 and Columbus Prize 2018. His works have been shown nationally and internationally at the São Paul International Short Film Festival, the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, the Double Feature series at the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt and at the 66th Berlinale, Berlin as well as at the Goethe-Institut Mexico Mexico City. In 2021 he had with ‘Pocket Call’ his second solo show at the Produzentengalerie Hamburg and has as well an institutional solo exhibition at Kunsthalle Bremerhaven.