Prateek Vijan with Neue Kunst in Hamburg
Solo Exhibition
12 – 20 Jan 2024

Prateek Vijan with Neue Kunst in Hamburg

The Produzentengalerie Hamburg is looking forward to the exhibition of the Neue Kunst in Hamburg scholarship holders, which is once again taking place in several galleries on Fleetinsel. We are particularly looking forward to the presentation of Prateek Vijan at our gallery.

Prateek Vijan’s exhibition is the second chapter in a series of works made about a fictional heist planned for the wooden automaton Tipu’s Tiger, residing in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. This object was originally looted by the British during the 4th Anglo-Mysore War of 1799, “a curious piece of mechanism, as large as life, representing a royal Tiger in the act of devouring a prostrate European officer.” Working under a pseudonym, Vijan spent his residency in London, researching and investigating the legal framework of this looted object and the security and architecture of the museum. In this process, the figure of the fly became a potent image: a stubborn circling, a source of irritation, a presence which usually would be shooed away. Drawing on observations, insights and structures from these acts of research-based probing and Vijan’s fascination with conventions of preservation/ conservation, his exhibition brings together a series of newly conceived work across sculpture, printmaking, moving image and installation.

Born in 1991 in New Delhi, India, Prateek Vijan completed his Master’s degree in Time-based Media at the HFBK Hamburg between 2019 and 2023. Prior to this, he participated in the Special K Mentorship Program with Kosuke Okahara and Katrin Keonning in Kolkata from 2017 to 2018. In addition to the travel grant Neue Kunst in Hamburg, he received the Arbeitsstipendium für Bildende Kunst der Stadt Hamburg in 2024, a publication grant from Materialverlag of HFBK Hamburg (2022), the Hiscox Art Prize (2021), the Deutschlandstipendium (2021/22) and the Leistungsstipendium für ausländische Studierende (2021). His works have been shown in exhibitions such as Gute Gerätschaft, Frappant e.V., Hamburg (2022), Honeymoon, Tangente, Vasenthien (2022), the Hiscox Art Prize exhibition, Galerie der HFBK Hamburg (2022), Conditions of Necessity, Kunsthalle Baden-Baden (2021), Proof of Stake, Kunstverein in Hamburg (2021) and So Close/ So Far, HyCP Veddel Space, Hamburg (2021).

Neue Kunst in Hamburg has been awarding scholarships since 1987 in order to give mainly young Hamburg artists the opportunity to present their work in an exhibition and a catalogue on a national level. Since 1997, the association has been awarding travel scholarships, which finance five-month stays abroad for five to a maximum of six artists with the aim of promoting the international exchange of experience and networking of young artists living in Hamburg with the art scene worldwide. The artists can further develop their work at a location of their choice and at the same time enter into an international dialogue. After their return, the fellows show their work in an exhibition. The selection of the scholarship holders and the curation of the exhibition has always been entrusted to alternating external curators.

The curator for the 2023/24 travel grant is Fatima Hellberg, who has been Director of the Bonner Kunstverein since the end of 2019. The art historian, born in Sweden in 1986, has curated exhibitions and projects at institutions such as ICA, London; Tate Modern; CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco; Museion, Bolzano; South London Gallery and Malmö Konsthall, Sweden. Fatima Hellberg was Artistic Director of Künstlerhaus Stuttgart (2015-19) and previously lived in London where she worked as a curator at Cubitt, London and Electra, a contemporary art organisation with a longstanding commitment to gender and feminism.