AREA: ART ON THE DANCEFLOOR Warhol, Basquiat & Co by VOLKER HINZ

AREA elevated nightclubbing to an art form,
celebrating creativity and collectivity over commerce. 

AREA was the name of a legendary, short-lived but spectacular nightclub in Lower Manhattan, New York City. It only existed from 1983-87 but it transcended boundaries between art and life, interlinked music, fashion, performance, and installation, creating a realm for radical creative experimentation and transformed the cultural landscape, inspiring until today. AREA was also a place where everyone mixed and mingled – the party people and the artists, regular citizens and high society, movie stars and musicians. It connected people across the social spectrum. 

Looking back from today, those AREA years marked a period full of freedom and hope. Back then, four highschool friends from California moved to New York City and without much ado and little money, rented an old warehouse and opened AREA. Never primarily intended as a commercial success, always artistically driven and motivated, the only constant factor was permanent change. Every six weeks AREA was spectacularly transformed into a new thematic and immersive installation: “Confinement “, “Food”, “Suburbia”, “Fashion”, or “Faith” wasn’t merely a motto, rather a complete cosmos in which everyone immersed with all senses. 

The fantastic images by renown German photographer Volker Hinz invite contemporary viewers to immerse themselves into the cosmos of AREA, suspended from time and space, and reminding us all of the power and hope that art can carry.

Nina Venus, curator

Volker Hinz (1947-2019) was a German photographer. Early in his career he became known for his political reportage and travel stories; now his portraits of artists, authors, fashion designers, sports men and politicians. At the beginning of his career in the 1970s, Volker Hinz formed his reputation with reports from the European cultural and political scene. Later, on behalf of the magazine, he took the opportunity for gripping stories and photographic documentations such as on New York nightlife and Hollywood. His last retrospective exhibition in Poland entitled “Legends” was shown in 2014 as a part of the 13th Fotofestiwal in Lodz. 

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17.06, 12:30 Curatorial tour of Volker Hinz’s exhibition Area… / language: English