Opening Friday, 7 Dec 2018, 19:00 Krist Gruijthuijsen Director of KW Institute for Contemporary Art Olaf Stüber Festival Director Toggling between modes including video, sculpture, audio, and even scent, Christian Friedrich’s work frequently employs elements of the sexually outré—e.g., bodily endurance and violence, foot fetishism—but plays them against formalism, aestheticism, and structural contradiction. Friedrich mixes footage from sex dungeons with touristy imagery of New York and aquatic life (Untitled, 2010–11) to highly rhythmic and accelerating videos, scents delicate glass sculptures of feet with pungent foot odor (various titles, 2017–), or creates ominous audio-visual installations involving water dropping (Are You Warm? Did You Have Trouble Getting Here? Have They Treated You Well?, 2017). Even though the artworld is supremely adept at normalizing and defusing, Friedrich leverages a mood of risk and unacceptability that is maintained by the works' avoidance of easy resolution and embrace of sustained internal disputation.