Sweet Dreams Security

The dual character of security – a prerequisite for prosperity and social peace on the one hand and potential and structural violence on the other – permeates everyday life and the public space of our cities. In his work, the Stuttgart artist Matthias Megyeri focuses on security and defensive devices on buildings and in public spaces: fences, protective wires, chains, bars, security personnel. Megyeri changes and alienates them in such a way that they are either heightened or usually seemingly trivialized: their threatening elements are redesigned with the help of a comic aesthetic, the language of children's toys as well as the kitsch and tourism industry, and thus demand a smile from us. In doing so, Megyeri draws attention to the originally aggressive forms and scandalizes their normality, a normality that is usually only noticed by those against whom it is directed.

Megyeri leaves the space of abstract discussion of the topic by establishing Sweet Dreams Security® with a twinkle in his eye as a brand that offers products that seemingly offer consumers an answer to the insoluble dilemma of security and freedom. Megyeri's works are painfully beautiful in every sense of the word.

For the Architekturgalerie am Weißenhof, Megyeri expands this strategy of alienation with a spatial installation. In doing so, the quality of the gallery as an exhibition space that is constructed in relation to the exhibit and the recipient is eliminated and the audience becomes an actor and participant in the processes and mechanisms that can be described on the topic of security.

Opening: October 18, 2023, 7 p.m.
with an introduction by Philipp Ziegler, head of the curatorial department at the ZKM
State Academy of Fine Arts,
Lecture hall new building 2

Symposium: Novermber 22, 2023, 7 p.m.
Speakers: Stephan Lessenich (Direktor des Frankfurter Instituts für Sozialforschung), Ania Corcilius (Artist, Salon Populaire, Stuttgart) and Brusk Hasan (Cafe LEGAL, Stuttgart)