free your mind and your ass will follow

 

Daniela Wolfer’s artistic work is deeply influenced by her life and work as a DJ. Even during her painting studies at the art academy in Stuttgart where she dedicated herself first to abstract paintings she has started her second career as a DJ in 1994 to capture the culture and its rapidness at that time. Instead of following strictly the academic path as an artist, Daniela has dived into the nightlife and the Hip Hop scene to develop her own visual language and to give classical topics a fresh interpretation while her paintings are strongly connected with the youth culture of the 90s and social phenomena of her own generation. In her performances as „DJ Dirty Daniela“ and „EVEN D.“, Daniela Wolfer’s music repertoire ranges from Hip Hop, Urban Music, Deep and Tech House to Electronic Music.

The artist’s openess for different styles is also reflected in the online show which presents fifteen CD cover paintings – each of them with its own soundtrack. Daniela uses sampling as a working method in both ways: By composing new art works with still existing fragments the spectator might discover references to cover icons of the music history like the covers of Funkadelic or Drake and to the artist’s musical companions such as DJ Friction and DJ Thomilla. Her pictorial collages includes stereotypical elements of the Hip Hop culture, everyday and practically forgotten working tools of a DJ like cables, speakers, vinyl records and tape recorders, light effects of the nights as well as surrealistic features. This artistic approach is also shown in the soundtracks of the respective covers which are sampled and re-arranged presenting well-known songs, live recordings of Daniela’s gigs, mix CDs of DJ Schowi (Massive Töne), DJ Emilio and the artist itself as well as brand new produced music of DJ Blomtwist, DJ Friction (Freundeskreis), DJ Thomilla (Turntablerockers) and Technobeton. Following the principle of cross over and visual composing Daniela Wolfer’s body of work is impossible to categorize. The exhibition title „Free Your Mind and Your Ass Will Follow“ refers directly to the album of the same title by the american funk band „Funkadelic“, released in July 1970 which had an enormous impact on many styles of music and can be understood as the artist’s maxim working across genres.

Special thanks to DJ Blomtwist, DJ Emilio, DJ Friction, DJ Schowi, DJ Thomilla, MC Bruddaal, State of Art and Technobeton. Listen to the music here!