"What should the surface of a city look like?"

Our cities are still defined by urban structures established many centuries ago, sometimes dating back to Roman times, more often shaped in the Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution. However, our world is changing rapidly. Surfaces are always the result of the underlying principles. Are the solutions of the past still viable today, especially in face of technological advances of post-modern societies such as the internet? I’m interested in how urban environments, architectural and transportation concepts can be made more responsive to the needs of its current inhabitants. How cities can become more useful, sustainable and flexible. But: Growth and prosperity are limited more than ever. Cities will have to adjust to this. How will this affect the city’s surfaces in the future? Start to imagine!

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Mario
Lombardo

Mario Lombardo (*1972, Rosario, Argentinia) is one of Germanys most relevant graphic designers. His characteristic talent for melding emotional intensity with an intelligent design approach makes his work simultaneously some of the most significant being produced today and timeless. Lombardos multifaceted repertoire includes works for clients such as Berlin Biennale, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, KaDeWe, Sony Music, Mercedes-Benz and Art Direction for publications such as SPEX, Liebling and Dummy. In 2010 Gestalten published the monograph: The Tender Spot The Graphic Design of Mario Lombardo. Mario Lombardo lives and works in Berlin.

Mandy
Greer

Mandy is a multi-disciplinary artist with an MFA from the University of Washington. She has shown at Henry Art Gallery, Bellevue Art Museum, Tacoma Art Museum, Frye Art Museum, Seattle Art Museum, The Lab Contemporary Art Center, in San Francisco, the Tampa Museum of Art and Aqua Art Miami. She works in public art, environmental installation, performance, photography and fiber-based sculpture. Nominated twice for the Tiffany Foundation Award; She received a 4Culture Special Projects Grant in 2011, 2009, 2007, 2006, 2003 and an Artist Trust Fellowship in 2004.

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The texture of the urban environment doesn’t resemble, when experienced haptically, the pristine glossy static surfaces of urban planning schematics, but rather more resembles the cyclical patina of the organic world. The city is made of layers of time, overlapping communities, individuals making space for themselves on their own terms, creative renewal only possible in reclaiming what is in the flux of decay.

My work is all about taking what is scraped of the urban environment in terms of our bodies – the massive piles of our clothes and domestic goods – emptying them of one meaning and regenerating them with new life, and energy that speaks to the timelessness of human experience, ritual and story.

To re-examine the texture of my own city, I took my family, my husband and son, out on some adventures to hidden pockets of creative renewal, to vistas of work and activity and flux, to respond intuitively and playfully to our urban scene of right now, by creating images of mythic cycles of the temple, the shaman, the recluse, the compass and the future.