FORM FOLLOWS PARKING ・Los Angeles / Berlin / Cottbus 2004–2026

„This is about cities whose infrastructure remains bound to the automobile. And about nature, treated as an infinite resource.  

This is about Elysian Park, rising north of Downtown Los Angeles: a hill paved in asphalt, serving merely a few times a month as a parking lot for Dodger Stadium.  

This is about finding more diverse, more intricate modes of planning, shapes and structures that actively hold space for nature, people, bikes, and material cycles.  

To honor what is already present and—adding nothing new—to derive form and function from what is given, fostering an equal evolution across all cities."

Artist Statement - Erik Göngrich

Erik Göngrich lives and works in Berlin. As an artist, architect, curator, and publisher, his work addresses and negotiates urban political issues. Through his sculptures, installations, publications, walks, drawings, and photographs, he reflects on the use and transformation of urban space. Existing spatial and social situations serve as the starting point for multi-year, often collaborative processes that culminate in site-specific, time-sensitive, and user-oriented artworks. It is in this spirit Satellit, a collaboratively curated project space in Berlin, is to be understood. At the Haus der Materialisierung (House of Materialization)—a hub for climate-friendly resource use located since 2020 at the Haus der Statistik near Alexanderplatz in Berlin—he co-initiated the Mitkunstzentrale and the Pilz-Kunst-Labor (Mushroom Art Lab), establishing a workshop for collective knowledge production. By recycling materials, ideas, and narratives, this workshop addresses material cycles, art, the public sphere, and society in times of climate emergency.

From October to December 2003, Erik Göngrich was a fellow at the Villa Aurora in Los Angeles.