EINGANG / ENTRANCE
Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig
05.07.–29.07.2018
Besides the main access, the Zündkerzenhalle at the MdbK has a north-facing side entrance that is otherwise barely used. For the exhibition EINGANG / ENTRANCE, this side entrance was designed like a main portal to the museum. Included in the installation was an oversized banner, suspended from the façade above this entrance, announcing the exhibition in the museum’s design: EINGANG / ENTRANCE, GREGOR PESCHKO, 05.07.–29.07.2018. The Zündkerzenhalle was accessible via the large double doors. To the right was a duplicate of the museum’s long black counter, festooned with announcements and brochures, but largely devoid of content and reduced to the museum’s corporate design. A uniformed supervisor stood behind the till, which was cut into counter. On the wall opposite the entrance, two info screens showed a somewhat self-referential view of the installation in the room. At the centre of the space there were two long black benches in the style of the museum. The exhibition EINGANG / ENTRANCE replicated the museum entrance situated in the adjacent room, taking possession of the museum’s lead structure and corporate identity. The newly fashioned entrance created an autonomous space in between, exhibiting the museum itself, yet deprived of its actual purpose. Instead it seemingly alluded to stage scenery or a backdrop for a film production. As a set, the work pointed to the subsequent image production, its prosumistic exploitation in social networks through photographs taken with the visitors’ cameras, leaving it waiting in a functionless space for potential activation and medial appropriation. Which structures generate visibility? And what public spheres do they create? On the one hand, EINGANG / ENTRANCE explored an imaginary space between the institution and its appearance, but on the other hand examined how this appearance itself repeatedly produces new images and how it is continuously pierced, annotated and illustrated by being overwritten through media editing. This exhibition fashioned a scenario in which the institution itself was reduced to an image, blurring the boundary between reality and fiction. The dramaturgy of a video recording or a smartphone photo shifts the perception of an exhibition and the museum and, as a second, simultaneous level of reality, places itself over the institution’s structural order. Thanks to digital dissemination and the nature of communication platforms, this second level usually reaches a far larger audience than the exhibition on site. The work occupies an autonomous space between these two manifestations of social space and in doing so addresses current relationships between the public domain and the counter-public domain, the institution and its counter-institution.
EINGANG / ENTRANCE
Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig
05.07.–29.07.2018
Besides the main access, the Zündkerzenhalle at the MdbK has a north-facing side entrance that is otherwise barely used. For the exhibition EINGANG / ENTRANCE, this side entrance was designed like a main portal to the museum. Included in the installation was an oversized banner, suspended from the façade above this entrance, announcing the exhibition in the museum’s design: EINGANG / ENTRANCE, GREGOR PESCHKO, 05.07.–29.07.2018. The Zündkerzenhalle was accessible via the large double doors. To the right was a duplicate of the museum’s long black counter, festooned with announcements and brochures, but largely devoid of content and reduced to the museum’s corporate design. A uniformed supervisor stood behind the till, which was cut into counter. On the wall opposite the entrance, two info screens showed a somewhat self-referential view of the installation in the room. At the centre of the space there were two long black benches in the style of the museum. The exhibition EINGANG / ENTRANCE replicated the museum entrance situated in the adjacent room, taking possession of the museum’s lead structure and corporate identity. The newly fashioned entrance created an autonomous space in between, exhibiting the museum itself, yet deprived of its actual purpose. Instead it seemingly alluded to stage scenery or a backdrop for a film production. As a set, the work pointed to the subsequent image production, its prosumistic exploitation in social networks through photographs taken with the visitors’ cameras, leaving it waiting in a functionless space for potential activation and medial appropriation. Which structures generate visibility? And what public spheres do they create? On the one hand, EINGANG / ENTRANCE explored an imaginary space between the institution and its appearance, but on the other hand examined how this appearance itself repeatedly produces new images and how it is continuously pierced, annotated and illustrated by being overwritten through media editing. This exhibition fashioned a scenario in which the institution itself was reduced to an image, blurring the boundary between reality and fiction. The dramaturgy of a video recording or a smartphone photo shifts the perception of an exhibition and the museum and, as a second, simultaneous level of reality, places itself over the institution’s structural order. Thanks to digital dissemination and the nature of communication platforms, this second level usually reaches a far larger audience than the exhibition on site. The work occupies an autonomous space between these two manifestations of social space and in doing so addresses current relationships between the public domain and the counter-public domain, the institution and its counter-institution.