For this site-specific exhibition at FOE Gallery, an existing hallway was closed off and the resulting space was displaced into the gallery using a reconstruction. However, the walls of the hallway were not just rebuilt but were constructed using a number of operations that undermine the very notion of inside and outside. An intricate layering of space is generated by the separation of the outside and inside faces of the walls of the configuration. The two independent wall surfaces were further cut, angled, inverted, and set together so that a thin, inaccessible space divides them. This in-between space is like the area inside the existing wall but its meaning is shifted by the inversions of the inside and outside face of the walls. This inside space is lined with fronts and backs, just as the viewer is at times enclosed by the back side of the walls which are illogically connected to the frontal face. Thus, for the sculpture, interior and exterior space is rendered meaningless and yet these categories take on a heightened, mysterious signification. Windows cut into the walls at seemingly random intervals also serve to exaggerate the notion of the wall as a connector and divider of space, while becoming enigmatic ciphers of an absent vista. Exploring the sculpture from multiple positions, we are surprised to discover a complex labyrinth generated only by a mute hallway. This structurally simple proposition confronts us with a complex and poetic articulation of space that expands from the most banal proportions to an almost cosmic magnitude. We find the ‘Janus’ face of an everyday interior partition elegantly articulated in this almost mythological riddle, where the exhibition space is used to present its own permutated fragment.
Riff # FOE 156
Project space FOE 156, Munic 2000
Ground floor plan, model draft