Swinging

by Ruth Barker, 26 Feb 2010

Hello,

just saw this on the bbc website. Seems Christoph Büchel has raised some eyebrows (at least) with his new project at The Secession in Vienna.

In a slight departure from previous works I’ve seen, rather than creating an installative ‘hyper-real’ environment within a gallery (see here for an example of Hole at Kunsthalle Basel ) Büchel has this time re-sited an existing real space within the gallery context. Specifically he’s installed Element6, a pre-existing nightclub (or sex club – accounts vary), which is normally located elsewhere in the city of Vienna, inside the gallery space. The club will be open at night when the gallery is closed. During the day visitors to the gallery will have to walk through the club (which will then be closed, and empty of staff and patrons) to reach The Secession’s basement, where they’ll be able to view the Beethoven Frieze by Gustav Klimt. Beethoven Frieze is the wall painting Klimt produced in 1902 for the Vienna Secessionist exhibition. Intended as a temporary commission, the work was later retained and restored. Significantly for Büchel, Klimt’s mural was originally attacked as being pornographic, but has since become lauded as a civic ‘masterpiece’.

Two things obviously interesting here: One is the switch between a work that was intended to be permanent, which is then kept as a precious object for posterity. Ginny? Any thoughts? ¹

The second is the nature of public space. The working definition of public art that I use for PAR+RS is ‘art practice that is not contextualised by a gallery or museum.’ Büchel’s work here interests me because it injects some friction to this idea. What happens when we re-contextualise the gallery itself, and temporarily lend it another function?

More later,
R

¹ Ginny Hutchison produced Seven Sunsets for Inverness city centre – a temporary commission that was then criticisedin the press for its very ephemerality. See previous Blog posts and comments.