JOHANNA STROBEL
MY HEART IS NOT A CLOCK
OCTOBER 11 - NOVEMBER 1, 2024
OPENING RECEPTION FRIDAY, OCTOBER 11 – 6-9PM
Pompei is excited to present “My heart is not a clock”, an installation of two ceramic sculptures and a virtual reality video by Johanna Strobel.
A space with a borrowed name from a time long ago exists in the present on a distant continent. Buried and frozen in time, yet resurrected again and again another Pompei lies in Brooklyn. In a small room a virtual world expands. Destruction and rebirth repeat not without cost. Accelerated cycles are running dead in the end. History repeats itself -but life passes. Time is the sensation of memory.
The immersive video explores philosophical concepts of circular time and the loss of species through human caused extinction. Situated in a stylized version of the Villa Farnesina in Rome, the voiceover narration follows the example of the passenger pigeon’s extinction in the early 20th century and its possible future de-extinction through cloning throughout the circle of time.
The multiple-part ceramics sculptures contain infrared heat emitters. Over time a cast paraffin wax bird melts into the lower part of the first sculpture, which functions as an egg-shaped mold and so the bird becomes an egg again. The second sister sculpture reverses this process – the egg melts into a bird shaped mold. With every iteration some of the wax evaporates, so that in the end just fragments of birds and eggs are cast and remelted until all the wax is gone - the cycle accelerates until it stops.
My Heart is not a Clock (Martha), 2022, 360 video, 5.7K, 5:28 min
My Heart is not a Clock (running out) I, 2024, ceramics, paraffin wax, silicone, cotton webbing straps, infrared heat emitter, cable, fasteners
My Heart is not a Clock (running out) II, 2024, ceramics, paraffin wax, silicone, cotton webbing straps, infrared heat emitter, cable, fasteners
Johanna Strobel holds parallel degrees in Information Science and Mathematics and graduated with honors in Painting and Graphics from the Academy of Fine Arts Munich, Germany. In 2020 she received an MFA in New Genres from Hunter College New York.
Her work has been exhibited in Germany, Italy, Austria, Taiwan, Korea, Canada and the US, including Neues Museum Nuremberg, Bundeskunsthalle, Bonn, Museum Gunzenhauser, Chemnitz, Kunstverein Munich, Institute for Modern Art Nuremberg, Bethanien, Berlin, 205Hudson Gallery, New York, Nada House, New York, NARS Foundation, Brooklyn; a part of the inaugural Immigrant Artist Biennial, New York, and featured online by Hauser & Wirth.
Johanna has received grants and stipends among others from the German Academic Exchange Service, Steiner Foundation, Stiftung Kunstfonds, the State of Bavaria, the German Artist Alliance and the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media of Germany.
She is a fellow of the Program for the Realization of Equal Opportunities for Women in Research and Teaching of the State of Bavaria; a member of NEW INC, the New Museum’s cultural incubator (New York), of Mensa International, and a TEDx speaker.