Edgar Unger, Artist

Edgar Unger (born 1993 in Ludwigshafen) lives and works in Cologne. By combining objects, paintings and ready-mades, Edgar Unger's works create installations in which he carries out an intervention that initially conveys the most obvious step. His works are subject to a DIY mentality in which the idea delegates the material, which gives rise to conclusions about fast-moving things, in which the attention economy buzzes over everything like a mantra. The objects and paintings function on their own, but can be rearranged to speak a new language. His installations often require an initial response of external forces or human intervention to be activated. An activation moment aimed at a calculated result. Although his materials and content are digitally inspired, he makes his works by hand. Here, the double-edged sword of the internet plays an essential role. On the one hand it is a place of uncertainties, on the other hand it holds hope for transparency. His work reflects this ambivalence and creates spaces for reflection and dialogue. Unger's work always pauses in the search to open up a space that functions in a transcultural manner without valence as an alternative projection surface to the digital space. Resembling the logic of dreams, in which influences melt together without judgement, his work emerges from a kind of mass appropriation that is woven into an overarching, neo-surrealist collage. Unger completed his studies at the Akademie der bildenden Künste in Karlsruhe in 2020 as a master student of Erwin Gross. He received the graduate travel grant of the Akademie der bildenden Künste Karlsruhe 2021 and the NEUSTART KULTUR funding in the same year. Lastly, Unger participated in the group exhibition Simultanprojekte 2023 in the Simultanhalle Köln, with the project imagine you got the cult right and go to heaven.