Menno Aden
* 1972 in Weener
Studies art at the University Bremen
Lives and works in Berlin
Exhibitions (Selection)
2010 “The Universe is not your Friend, Babe”, with Steffi Stangl and Jessica Buhlmann,
Deák Erika Galéria, Budapest
2010 “Urban Life”, PopUp195 Photogalerie, Berlin
2010 "New Homeland", VHS-Photogalerie, Stuttgart
2009 "Experimental Video Art 6 Exhibition", Video,
Bangkok/Chiang Mai/Nakhorn Pathom (Thailand)
2009 "New Homeland", Architektur Galerie, Berlin
2009 "The Dark Side Of The Moon", with Steffi Stangl, Natalie Pelosi, Marieken Matschenz,
Christian Stähler, Galerie im Park, Bremen
2009 "New Homeland", Deutsches Architektur Museum, Frankfurt am Main
2009 "Trierenberg Super Circuit", Linz (Austria)
2008 Solo Show "Ambient Portraits“, Photography, Galerie Zu Den Ferd, Berlin
2008 "VDO-ART European-Thai-Exchange", Video,
Bangkok/Chiang Mai/Nakhorn Pathom (Thailand)
2007 Solo Show "Quis Custodiet Custodiam“, Paintings, Your Mother Gallery, Singapore
2002 Solo Show "+ - +“, Performance, Video and Sound Installation, Hörbar, Hamburg
AWARDS
2009 European Award of Architectural Photography 2009, Frankfurt/Main
Room Portraits
Menno Aden portraits public and private spaces from a top view as if the ceiling has been taken off. At first the mostly deserted spaces and rooms look like scale models. Only at a closer look one realizes that the rooms are real. This impossible perspective is made possible with the help of a camera scanning the room in up to 100 pictures from just below the ceiling downwards. The photos are then montaged at the computer into a single picture.
Aden's top view suggests God having an eye on private spaces. This omnipotent point of view reduces the autonomy of 'my home is my castle', the sketch of our personal designs for our lives, to a provocative matter-of-fact level that reveals immediately private systems of order. The association of the permanently present observation camera is only too obvious. The voyeuristic tinge underlies especially Aden's top view into secret retreats, such as private homes. Aden's portraits are matter-of-fact and abstract at the same time. They offer the observed as an artistic pattern of interpretation. Aden's modus operandi reminds one of Niklas Luhmann's thesis that every individual generates new assessments of the environment from the sum of observations made by the individual without ever being able to reflect upon preformed cultural patterns. In Aden's work these mechanisms are aesthetically exposed.
