KÜNSTLERHAUS

BETHANIEN

Exhibition

Markus Degerman

“No matter how hard you work to bring things up, there’s someone out there working just as hard, to bring them down”

Markus Degerman’s works are experiments with architecture and elements of design. His interventions reprocess public, urban or institutional space. To create the installation “No matter how hard you work…”, Degerman reconstructed architectonic elements from various settings and set them within the exhibition space as sculptural objects: an accessible, u-shaped metal grid structure like the ones used for wheelchair ramps encircles the pillars in the centre of the room; a sculpture in the form of a round-arch doorway, made of MDF, laminated chipboard and roughcast, picks out a popular design element of the past, now associated primarily with the ‘grotto’ style of some Italian restaurants. Separated from this context, it again seems like a cool design object. Further components of the exhibition are window elements made of wood like those representative of stylish living in old buildings: in the meantime, plastic mock-ups to stick onto the windows of new buildings are available and therefore also make them poor taste for some people.

Markus Degerman uses such examples of style to point out that architecture and design, as aesthetic discourse, always interrelate with current political and social discourse, and experience the same permanent change for that reason. “No matter how hard you work…” intends to sound out the potential for differing approaches to concepts like ‘quality’ or ‘value’ within the framework of specific aesthetic and political contexts.

Exhibition
11.07. – 27.07.2008
Tue - Sun: 2 - 7pm
Admission free

Opening
10.07.2008
7 - 10 pm

PARTNER
IASPIS

Markus Degerman holds a fellowship from the International Artists Studio Program in Sweden (IASPIS), Stockholm.

Studio 3, Bethanien