On Stage:
Art, Space, and Orchestration
Since the beginning of the 20th century, it hasn’t only been the sciences that
have reinterpreted space in new and controversial ways. The fine arts have
also made space the object of theatrical and minimalist stagings
reflecting a variety of perceptual models. An overview by Christiane
Meixner.
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Gregor Schneider, Totes Haus Ur,
interior view (Gästezimmer), 1985-97
(c)VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2005
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Gregor Schneider, Totes Haus Ur,
interior view, 1985-97, (c)VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2005
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At the 2001 Venice
Biennale , Gregor
Schneider’s
Dead House ur suddenly seemed very alive: onlookers were standing
outside crowded together, while inside visitors kept running into one
another as they wandered through the architectonic labyrinth. All of which
hampered the work’s effect, of course, aiming as it did at a
claustrophobic effect involving the greatest possible degree of isolation
and disorientation.
Schneider was sixteen years old when he took
over his father’s one-family house in Rheydt in the mid-eighties, a
perfect example of architecture designed along practical needs. Since
then, the artist obsessively rebuilt his opus magnum, furnishing it
with isolated rooms and dead-end hallways. He then dissected it into
parts, sold it to various collectors, and showed it complete for the last
time in Venice, at least for the time being.
Gregor Schneider, Haus Ur in Rheydt, 1985-1999, (c)VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2005
Despite all the dismantling the dwelling underwent, what Schneider didn’t
call into question was his idea of space as a fixed entity of perception.
What he destroyed was the logic of the existing architecture, which he
reassembled according to an entirely subjective dramaturgy, turning the
house into a stage that can be entered, a manifestation of psychic states
that mirrors the fears and phobias of its visitors.
That the
concept of space can also be defined differently is documented by one of
the most important German artists of the post-war era:
Hanne Darboven. Over three decades ago, she began visualizing temporal
sequences. Her method gave rise to a spacial image through an additive
process of linkage: by transferring an abstract entity such as time into
serial structures and arresting it in numerical columns, Darboven seeks to
visualize the fleeting. Each additional presentation of the drawings also
structures and marks the location in which it is shown – albeit in a
highly abstract manner.
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Hanne Darboven, 21x21, 1968
Deutsche Bank Collection
(c)Darboven, Courtesy Galerie Tanit, Munich
In
contrast to the content-laden House ur , Darboven’s concept can be
summed up in a single remark: "I write things down, but I don’t describe
anything." And while Darboven’s space is a construction, Schneider turns
to architecture, whose affects and palpability emotionally take hold of
the viewer. Yet both lay claim to the three-dimensional space surrounding
their works, interpreting it as a dialogue, although of very different
natures. Recently, narrative works of art similar to Schneider’s
House ur have attracted more attention than austere conceptual
strategies have. Entire exhibitions have been dedicated to the phenomenon
of theatrically staged installation art – including
On Stage at the
Kunstverein Hannover (2002/2003), where, for instance,
Christoph Büchel had a punk band’s entire equipment frozen at –25°
Celsius immediately after their concert, arresting the transitory moment
of the performance in a kind of standstill.
Christoph Büchel, Minus, 2002, Installation from 2005
in collaboration with the groups Los Chicros and I love UFO
(c)Büchel, Courtesy Galerie Susana Kulli, St. Gallen
The same year, the large exhibition of
Matthew Barney’s Cremaster
films took place at the
Ludwig Museum in Cologne, including film sets made from refrigerated
Vaseline, while the magazine
Texte zur Kunst published a critical issue on the theme of space.
The latter investigated the close connection between various methods of
spacial orchestration and art’s basic understanding of spacial concepts.
For over a century, the scientific disciplines have repeatedly interpreted
space in controversial ways. Yet all versions refer to two basic systems
of reference – space is defined either as an absolute quantity or as
relative and constructed. And although a work of art like House ur
feeds off the older, static idea of a spacial continuum, categories such
as "contemporary" or "outdated" are insufficient when confronted with a
respective idea of space. Instead, they illustrate how radically ideas
concerning the relationship between humans and space have changed since
1905.
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