A conversation about the nature of regional scenes was the initial impetus for having a show of San Francisco based artists here in Leipzig. All of us involved in the Pierogi Leipzig project have links to northern California and the San Francisco region. Pierogi itself is a product of the burgeoning Williamsburg art scene, a pronounced alternative to New York’s Chelsea arts complex. Pierogi is currently participating in another regional scene even further removed from Manhattan, that of post-GDR Leipzig which presented itself as an interesting correlation to Williamsburg. There has been a lot of attention, of late, given to Leipzig’s hothouse atmosphere producing first the Leipzig school and then the new Leipzig school.

This show, then, is an opportunity to bring artists from one pocket of alternative culture production to another. With Pierogi the perennial alternative space as the conduit.

The title Euphorion comes from Goethe’s Faust, a story about an even earlier Leipziger. Euphorion is an Icarus type character who got a little too hot for his own good, mirroring the double-edged nature of the art world and marketing mechanisms in general.

“If you want to capture us, don’t be so eager. In the end, we are just longing to embrace the form you so sweetly display” (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust Part II)