Klara Hobza • Ich halte das Rheingold für eine gute Investition • 07.11.–19.12.2015
In her current exhibition, Klara Hobza presents both new works related to her long-term project Diving Through Europe, as well as a new group of works related to her diving through the Rhine and the therefore associated daring search for the contested source of the Rhine. Hobza leads the viewer through the expedition along the installation Rheinquell [The Source of the Rhine] – a longitudinal section of the river. Ultimately, while searching for the source of the river, she unexpectedly finds the Rhinegold. This stone forms the apex of the elevation profile, the virtual source. The exhibition concludes with a cartographic representation of her dives to date. Since 2012, Hobza has been crossing Europe in stages by diving through the rivers that connect the North Sea to the Black Sea. In 2014, while diving through Holland’s complex water systems, Hobza was forced off her planned route. The video Delft sums up this moment, capturing the encounters below and above water in surreal scenes. Hobza’s textual recapitulation of this dive and the video forms the latest and therefore the sixth episode of the Diving Through Europe project.
“Ich halte das Rheingold für eine gute Investition.“ [I think Rhinegold is a good investment.] takes the shape of a self-contained narration and encapsulates the parallel worlds that make up Hobza’s present-day artistic practice: diving, the representation of this undertaking through the materials she encounters en route, as well as the unanticipated detours that arise.