Membrane

An Exhibition of Video-art & Photography
Niklas Goldbach, Stephanie Kloss and Masih Mostajeran

Curator: Alireza Labeshka
Exhibition Design: Mobasher Niqui

June 9 – June 30, 2017
Kaaf Gallery

KAAF Institute is pleased to present “Membrane” an exhibition of video-art and photography by German artists Niklas Goldbach and Stephanie Kloss who are being accompanied by an Iranian artist Masih Mostajeran. The exhibition will open with a reception on Friday June 9st, from 4 to 8 PM; The exhibition will run through May 30, 2017 and will be on view every day from 4 to 8 PM. Niklas Goldbach and Stephanie Kloass are also KAAF institute artists in residence; Stephanie Kloss and Masih Mostajeran will be peresent in KAAF exhibition space for any question in the opening day.

Niklas Goldbach, born in Witten, Germany, lives and works in Berlin. After studying Sociology at Bielefeld University and “Photography and Video” at the Unversity of Applied Sciences Bielefeld, he was awarded with a “Meisterschüler” degree at the University of the Arts Berlin in 2006. In 2005 he received the Fulbright Grant New York and majored in the MFA program of Hunter College, New York City.
Niklas Goldbach received several sholarships (i.e. Stiftung Kunstfonds Bonn 2010, Arbeitsstipendium Bildende Kunst des Berliner Senats 2013, Globalstipendium des Berliner Senats 2014, Dredsdner Stipendium für Fotografie 2016) and has presented his works in numerous solo shows, group exhibitions, and festivals in venues like the as the Museum der Moderne, Salzburg, Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid, Mori-Art Museum, Tokyo, Neuer Berliner Kunstverein n.bk., Cornerhouse, Manchester, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taichung, Centre Pompidou, Paris, Berlinische Galerie Museum for Contemporary Art Berlin, Museum Ludwig, Cologne and the Short Film Festival Oberhausen. In 2014 he was awarded with the “Paula Modersohn-Becker Jubilee Award”. This year he was Artist in Residence at “Villa Aurora”, Los Angeles.
The ambiguous tension between the individual’s desire for uniqueness and modern society’s tendency to enforce conformity are fundamental to his work: standardization and inimitability, containment and individual freedom, ostentation and understatement are only some of the antagonistic issues that create the kind of socio-psychological conflicts around which his work revolves. The interaction between psychological settings and the urban as well as the natural environment shaping our contemporary living conditions and mind-sets are often in the center of his work.

Stephanie Kloss is a German visual artist whose photographic work focuses on historic, social and architectural utopias. After her architectural studies at the Technische Universität Berlin she studied photography and media art with Thomas Struth and Candida Höfer at the HfG Karlsruhe. Her work deals on the image behind the visible, the invisible, on the story transported by the depiction. It is a search for the fragmentary image of a forgone present, a utopian past. Metaphorical and physical boundaries between spaces, but also between utopia and reality, history and the present, individual and collective, scale and model are negotiated in her images.
Among her exhibitions are „Sodom Series“, Salon Muschter, Berlin 2017, „Triangle/ Road to Giza“, Galerie Laura Mars Grp., Berlin 2016, „Transit“, Acud Project Space, Berlin, „Memory Lab“, Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin 2014, „Hausbesetzung“, Kunstverein Wiesbaden, „Weltausstellung“ mit Heidi Specker, Galerie September, Berlin 2013, „Beyond Eden“ in „Bauhaus und Kibbuz – Pioniere des Kollektivs“, Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau, 2012, „Gehen Blühen Fließen“, Stadtgalerie Kiel, 2011, „Selected Artists“, Senatsstipendiaten 2010, NGBK, Berlin, Galleria Arte National, Caracas 2009. Stephanie Kloss has been represented for 10 years by the Galerie Laura Mars Grp. Berlin.

Masih Mostajeran studied architecture and got his master in architecture from University of Science and Technology. His artistic practices are focused mainly on photography and video art. Beside working as an artistic photographer, he runs the architectural photography studio “Deed” working with established Iranian contemporary architects. Having his first solo show at Raf Projects, Masih succeeded to be featured in the curator talks and conferences like “Hacking Urban Furniture” in Berlin, or “re-directing east” in Ujasdowski Castle in Warsaw. He has participated exhibitions like “Flanerie” or “Enqelab Street” in KAAF Institute Tehran and Center for Art and Urbanisim in Berlin. Masih has actively contributed to ongoing project “Tehran Monoxide Project” and worked by curators like Negar Farajiani, Alireza Labeshka and Lise Rask.