In THE HUDDLE, Katja Aufleger makes several pieces of construction machines – stripped of their functions and redefined – enter into an unconventional

dialogue. In sport, the word „huddle“, that gives the piece its title, refers to a gathering of the team in order to discuss strategy for its next move. In similar

fashion to her 2021 installation Applause, where an excavator clapped its hands powerfully, the Berlin-based artist develops a language of her own for

machines whose gestures and movements also follow their own internal logic. The familiar sight of construction machines outdoors in public spaces is made

stranger and gives rise to new associations: is this archaic-seeming group perhaps directly related to the most modern robots? Are they trying to tell us

something – or are they no longer concerned about interacting with us humans? Katja Aufleger has become well-known in recent years for her powerful

pictures and sculptures loaded with tension, which permit many different interpretations without slipping towards banality. How she masters this balancing act

and whether we, as spectators, observe the interplay or trigger it, can be found out on the forecourt of the Jahrhunderthalle Bochum.

exhibition view: Ruhrtriennale, Bochum DE 2022

pictures: THE HUDDLE - a contibution from Urbane Künste Ruhr for Ruhrtriennale 2022. Daniel Sadrowsky, Heinrich Holtgreve, Katja Illner