"CITY OF KINGS', an exhibition by German artist, Gerd Rohling, opens today at the National Gallery of Jamaica 12 Ocean Boulevard in downtown Kingston, starting at 11:00 a.m. The exhibition is based on Mr. Rohling's installation Black Echo: Step IV.
Mr . Rohling has had a long and interesting career that has spanned nearly 30 years. Although he has lived in Berlin for most of his adult life, his installation projects have taken him all over the world from Naples and Accra to New York, Bangkok and Mumbai.
Like his other projects, Mr. Rohling has worked on Black Echo for many years, which has taken him to Ghana, Brazil, New York and finally Jamaica. The project visually traces the sounds of Africa that have been echoed and transformed across the black diaspora.
For Mr. Rohling the black circular form, a motif that is repeated throughout these locations in the album form and in the shape of the drum, for instance is used as conceptual inspiration and appears in many of his photographs on view.
As the artist himself notes "This shape and this strong echo have prevailed in the face of some of the most terribly cruel events on the entire history of mankind. We encounter both the form and the echo particularly in Brazil, USA and in the Caribbean, and here with a particularly dynamic and unmistakable flavour in Kingston, Jamaica!"
The current installation Black Echo: Step IV includes, among other things, photographs of the entire project from the different sites he has visited, while concentrating on the work he has done in Jamaica.
The exhibition is partly sponsored by the German Embassy in Kingston.
