NEVIN ALADAĞ

The exhibition is spread across the main space of Galerie Krinzinger and combines works from the series Vibrating Images and _Music Room Darmstadt—_these are sound sculptures that Nevin Aladağ first brought together into a complete installation for her solo exhibition Raise the Roof in the exhibition building on Mathildenhöhe Darmstadt (2025/26).

With Music Room Darmstadt, Nevin Aladağ continues a series of works she began in 2014 that draws on the European tradition of the music salon. As a type of room associated with bourgeois representation, the music room was a central design task for the artists of the Art Nouveau movement. Through targeted modifications, Aladağ transforms furniture and everyday objects from around 1900 into musical instruments. A glockenspiel, for example, fits seamlessly into an iconic armchair by Viennese designer Josef Hoffmann, its bright sound breaking through the rhythmically austere structure of the wooden struts. In addition, a piano stool is connected to the bellows of a concertina, which can be made to sound when the height-adjustable mechanism is gently activated.

With her keen sense for high-quality craftsmanship, Aladağ is in tune with a guiding principle of the arts and crafts reform around 1900. Following the concept of the objet trouvé, however, the artist questions the original function of the furniture, as well as the conventions of bourgeois interior design. The diversity of the objects, which have been combined with musical instruments of different temporal, geographical and cultural origins, also reflects the biographies of the people who once owned the furnishings. In the moment of musical improvisation, Aladağ’s music room becomes a meeting place that transcends time and space, revealing the community-building potential of art and music.