The clear message of social and political critique once projected by Nils Norman’s work has become opaque in his latest computer-based pictures. Gone is the diagrammatic approach in which well-organized groups of images are directly accompanied by concise, often humorous texts elucidating the artist’s position on the urban environment’s present failings and future potential. His new ink-jet prints on coated Alu-Dibond panels are still generated with Illustrator, his preferred software program, but the pictorial elements now float, unmoored and relatively decontextualized, against lush red

Many people are familiar with the Schnittraum in Cologne, a small storefront in the middle of the city repurposed as an exhibition space that became a favorite gathering spot for young artists, students, art critics, and aficionados in the late ’90s. Few realize, though, that the founder of this space, Corinna Schnitt, for whom it is named but who no longer participates in its activities, is herself an artist who has a series of rarely seen short films to her credit. This screening of two films from 2003, Living a Beautiful Life and Das Nächste Mal (Next Time), was the first time any of them