Layr curated by Lou von der Heyde
„Walter or You jerk you didn’t call me up“
www.emanuellayr.com
Curator(s):
Lou von der Heyde is a curator and doctoral researcher at EPFL whose practice focuses on collaborative and cross-disciplinary formats, with a particular interest in time-based media, performative contexts, and the social conditions of exhibition-making. She was a Curatorial Fellow at the Julia Stoschek Foundation, where she developed “The Time That Remains,” a multi-part project bringing time-based media art into public spaces in Düsseldorf. Lou co-organises HEROINE, an artist-run space in Frankfurt, and pip, a project space in Munich, and is co-founder of DELPHI_space in Freiburg. She studied Curatorial Studies at Städelschule/Goethe University Frankfurt, Critical Studies at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, and Liberal Arts and Sciences in Freiburg and Paris. In 2025, she held a research fellowship at the German Center for Art History, Paris.
Artist(s):
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*1966, lives in Cologne
- Larry Clark
- Lili Dujourie
- William Gaucher
- Brook Hsu
- Sergej Jensen
- Oscar Kargruber
- Felix Krapp-Raczek
- Silke Otto-Knapp
- Trevor Shimizu
- Kazuyuki Takezaki
- Vunkwan Tam
- Evelyn Taocheng Wang
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In the 1980s, West repeatedly turned to the material of gold, as seen in works like Freude or Idiosyngramm, which oscillate between psychoanalysis, ornament, and irony. His pieces allude to cultural, psychological, and art-historical meanings, inviting layered associations—even if they often resist rational interpretation.
[…] It was raining outside. Or it had been raining for some time and I hadn’t noticed. The city lay behind the glass, blurred, unreal. Walter stepped beside me.
WALTER And?
I covered the microphone with my hand.
I What do you mean, ‘and’?
WALTER Is everything all right now?
I No.
He nodded. For a moment we were all reflected in the window, Walter, you and I; not Jerk, though I could hear his voice. I put my hand to the glass. It was cold.
JERK What are you doing?
I saw our reflections, the pictures, the dark city, or the other way round. In the glass everything lay on top of everything else.
I I’m trying to find something out.
JERK What?
I thought of Althoff’s picture. Of the many stories, the explanations. You’ll never understand it. And: How lovely it would be if you could.
I Whether one can love someone without understanding them.
There was a pause. I looked at you. You looked back. Walter raised his eyebrows.
JERK And?
I Don’t know.