FRANZ ACKERMANN
Franz Ackermann is a multimedia artist whose practice is entwined with the action and implications of travel and tourism. Ackerman’s exuberant works with their saturated colours are inhabited with overlapping forms that merge with fragments of images taken directly from urban reality. Globalisation and the issue of tourism also play an important part in his artistic explorations.
These new urban realities and the ways in which they are perceived, at a time when both realities and perceptions are driven by ceaseless flows of tourists and information, become a fundamental element of the exhibition and to reiterate the strong connection between the gallery space and the outside.
With his works, he aims to reveal the two facades of tourism; on the one hand is the appeal of the rapid, international travel consumption culture, while on the other hand is the cultural degradation, architectural marks left behind. His installations often appear to resemble the strange advertisements designed for the cultural tourism industry. While the spaces that he describes do not appear unique, they are also extremely familiar—non-existent spaces in which the traveling tourist’s desire replaces the local culture.