The friends of the GfZK visited the exhibition Hold your horses in the gallery b2 and met the artist Michael Hahn.
In the introduction to the exhibition, Elizabeth Gerdemann writes: “Hold your horses”, is an English phrase that means something like “wait, slow down”. The phrase is usually used when someone wants to act hastily. Not surprisingly, the phrase originated in the American West, in the days of cowboys, gunslingers and wagon trains. Michael Hahn’s West operates as a hub for new ideas and unusual combinations: He understands the West as something of which he is a part, but to which he does not fully belong to. Hahn grew up in the GDR and East Germany in Leipzig. Today he travels frequently to the U.S. and emphasizes his interest in changes and impressions of both worlds in his work of the last ten years. (…) Hahn’s perception of the West’s role is similar to that described by Rebecca Solnit in River of Shadows: The West has changed the world from a “world of places and materials to a world of representations and information, a world with a far wider reach and less solid ground.”
Following this, references to Hollywood and Silicon Valley, among others, can be found in the works of Micheal Hahn: the titles of the artwork in his exhibition refer to Hollywood films.
Michael Hahn (born 1974, Leipzig) studied fine arts at the Kunsthochschule Halle. He was a master student in the class “Intermedia” with Prof. Alba D’Urbano at the Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig.