Air and Water / Luft und Wasser
2002
Two free-standing metal rack modules of the company Otto Kind
Each ca. 100x30x230
Installation view of the solo show Air and Water, Dresdner Bank, Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Artist's statement:
1. Air and water, what can one initially associate with them? Perhaps two vital elements?
Or what the earth consists of?
2. There’s a corner at a petrol station for pumping air and filling water. A neon sign
designates this corner (like diesel and petrol): air and water.
3. Why have I never before regarded these words as so profound? What a strange inner
distance to everyday things and daily repetitions.
4. Two equally high plug-in shelf racks are placed in the exhibition space. One has very
many shelves to store a lot of things – no, there are in fact too many shelves for it to be
useful. The other has only the number required for it to stand. This metal shelf system
of the company Otto Kind is an industrial system and the construction and the materials
are conceived according to its purpose and utilisation. With their different numbers of
shelves, the two storage areas are arranged in an equally dysfunctional way regarding the
original intention of usage.
5. The social activity and influence of a person is all too easily altered and assessed in a
modified way, even under- or overestimated depending on the social situation. But is a
complex and at the same time autonomous judgement of an individual even possible in
this context? Air and water, consisting of metal rack modules, would be an unavoidably
paradoxical statement of a feeling of intimacy and isolation in face of the life of a person.
Isabel Podeschwa on the exhibition:
...With her installation "Luft und Wasser/ Air and Water", which gives the exhibition its name,
a standardised system is also modified and taken out of its customary context: the work consists
of two free-standing rack modules. One rack has no shelves, its frame is empty. In the other rack,
the shelves are placed so close to each other that there is hardly room for anything to be stored.
"Set of shelves", as a mode, is still transported by the two objects, but one's attention is drawn
more to its aesthetic presence. The title of the installation, "Luft und Wasser/ Air and Water",
refers to an experience with language: Haegue Yang found the conceptual pair, which is often
cited in its existential or metaphysical meaning, as huge neon letters at a petrol station.
The words, loaded with meaning, were connoted in a quite commonplace way here:
they simply referred to objects of everyday use - a watering-can and an air compressor.
next
back