Zimmer Frei

Zimmer Frei offers a fresh look into the art practices of Los Angeles-based international artists who use unconventional humor in their art while living the “American Dream.” The works selected represent the variety of voices examining their place in a new culture, while searching for an identity and points of connectedness. Mediums are as diverse as the artist selection. The “American Dream” was built on the back of immigrants, and it is still more open than many other countries to the idea of diversity, thus the term Zimmer Frei - Welcome.

The title Zimmer Frei (a German term for vacancy) evokes childhood memories of summer travels with my parents through Italy, Yugoslavia, and Greece, where foreign tourists were welcomed to stay at private homes or B&Bs of that time. It was a time of progress and foreigners were welcomed.

Wonzimer Gallery’s name means “living room” in German. The gallery has an entrance designed as a bookshelf portal. This entrance inspired me to propose a group exhibition to expand the site into a “mind-space,” suggestive of a gateway, both nostalgic and being here/now, to serve as a global convergence.

The gallery space will be submerged in a soft sound scape that cradles the sounds and music that reference the home of artists’ originations. The sound scape will be motion triggered by audience movement in different corners of the gallery.

At Wonzimer Gallery with Zimmer Frei the artists will create a unique, welcoming, globally interconnected space that will invite viewers to sit down and contemplate our collective humanity.

- Snezana Saraswati Petrovic