Inboden, Gudrun Wartesaal Reinhard Mucha 1982 pg 1 of 11

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8 pg 8 of 11 Mucha Inboden Translation from German by John W. Gabriel Reflecting otherness in sameness, in what Hegel called opposed doubling, is the constant trait of Reinhard Mucha s art. The site where his works/installations are shown determines their development to a crucial extent. Their adaptation to the exhibition space serves to appropriate its visual data and render the character and function of the space visible and understandable by means of repetition. Yet the works do not stop there. Their illusionistic aesthetic reflection is merely the conceptual point of departure; the process of making and its results are not mimetic. Rather than translating observed reality into a different (artistic) medium, Mucha doubles the immediate circumstances of the work s site tautologically; in the form of photographs, actual mirrorings, or appropriation of concrete elements of the space into the work, or less directly by calling up associations that are unique to the exhibition site. Frequently these various forms of doubling are blended. This is why any appreciation of Mucha s art has to take account of a remarkable tension between adaptation and contradiction, reproduction and autonomy, reception and production. These oppositions can no longer be characterized in terms of art or non-art. The space in which contemporary art emerges is no longer defined a priori; the forcefield by which it is defined has to be reconstituted anew with each work. In many cases Mucha does justice to this insight by terminating a work conceived for a certain site when the exhibition period is over. Only rarely is a work transferable to other spaces, different situations. Astron Taurus, for instance, executed in 1981 for the ars viva show at the Kunsthalle Bielefeld, consisted of equipment the museum required to mount exhibitions: table showcases, pedestals, hanging partitions, dogs, ladders, barriers, seating, etc. The industrial design of these furnishings devoted to the presentation of art conveyed allusions, among other things, to the exhibition sponsor, the Culture Department of the Federal Association of German Industry. In this way, Mucha marked out the sphere in which his piece developed and from which it simultaneously divorced itself as a sculpture. His wheels, although part of the museum inventory, and the Astron Taurus brand ventilators (the sole external components) rendered the work mobile and increased the autonomy which it already intrinsically possessed as a sculptural configuration divorced from the space and dominating it. Yet the piece s intrinsic meaning derived not merely from a negation of its connection with the space and the special exhibition situation. On the contrary: it obviously represented an attempt to communicate information about the site where it was located and shown. Unlike a Dada sculpture, it was not arbitrarily composed of objets trouvés to assert its autonomy; rather, it remained purposely rooted in the substrate of its emergence, in order to make a statement about it in situ and about the site s relationship to the piece. The field of associations opened by Astron Taurus derived from the space and reflected back into the space. It comprised, as it were, a Tower of Babel, or, as Mucha says, in analogy to Caspar David Friedrich s Wreck of the Hope, it summed up every aspect of the location and the contained work in terms of an autonomous language which, though consisting of a real vocabulary, possessed the force of a vision. With tautology Mucha chooses a level of reflection (in the sense of mirroring) which, unlike painted quotations, is intrinsically capable of evoking a meaning which visually illustrates the underlying problematic nature of events such as that in Bielefeld, which went under the title Sculptures and Installations. * * * * *

9 pg 9 of 11 Becoming an integral part of the network surface has replaced severed roots; the diachronic, the vertical structure, is suspended in the air.1 A defunct power plant, an accumulator that provides no energy, a frostbound cooling unit open to inspection in the wake of a disaster these are perhaps the first and most striking links in the chain of associations triggered by s sculpture at Galerie Max-Ulrich Hetzler. Closely fitted into the space, interlocking with it, the sculpture simultaneously takes possession of the space and stands opposed to it: a compact configuration of industrial galvanized steel shelves, juxtaposed and interlocked with each other at right angles, encumbering, immovable, forbidding. If you rise to the challenge of exploring the content of this container, at one point you come upon a clear if not entirely explanatory hint an illuminated plaque bearing the word or name SIEGEN, an image and railway station sign in one. An exhibit in its own right and at the same time part of the exhibited sculpture, this plaque interrupts my train of mental associations, evidently in favor of a tautology that plays on the exhibition theme per se. My current situation as a viewer of this sculpture in the Galerie Hetzler space suddenly becomes an integral part of the work. As I look around the space, I find my assumption confirmed in several respects: the galvanized steel bands of the partitions are repeated over and over; the fluorescent lights on the ceiling illuminate the fluorescent lighting along the upper edge of the sculpture; the work shares its hermetic, closed, cold character with that of the space itself. Displayed in the form of an exhibition, the sculpture takes on a transitory, temporary character, like something set aside and waiting. In fact it seems already to have left the room to which it is apparently adapted. At this point one notices that it stands on wheels. Further analogies with the gallery space and its intrinsic contradictions come to mind: the labelled shelves recall a gallery storage space for paintings; they contain painted place name signs that can be taken out at will, displayed, exhibited, as immediately suggested by the one on exhibit, with the name SIEGEN. This insight spirits one s thoughts far beyond the constricted, hermetic shelves and space, out to the countless towns and limitless spaces outside. Yet one s imagination is not permitted to roam there uninhibitedly and infinitely, because the images, the stencilled names, immediately set limits. They imitate the baked enamel signs of train stations, those special places... that do not really form a part of the city but contain their essence only in so far as they bear their names on a signboard, in pure, schematic form... (Marcel Proust, In Remembrance of Things Past, quoted by Mucha). At this point, one s eye falls on a wardrobe a piece of monumental architecture from grandmother s era, both architecture and container like the shelves, but architecture from the heroic period of railway stations: lacking wheels, embodying a fixed date and point in time, a characteristic facade facing straight ahead, lying behind us, an epoch in the dialectic of time. At this point the spaces, the towns, the stations become historical. The train of associations can now circle back to the beginning: I immediately find myself set down in an intermediate state between remembering and numbness, the feeling of mental emptiness before the train s departure, between starting and reaching the destination in a standstill outside of time, a temporary playing dead, sitting there and waiting (without expectations) in the waiting room. Or in different terms: the year 1982 in Nebel der Indifferenz (Fog of Indifference), behind which history has retreated 2 a power plant without function. As an integral part of this nameless standstill on wheels, as Mucha describes the sculpture, you already have to view the thing more as a kind of large-area relay. No longer as roots, depths, origins, but as a relay, countless circuit connections occurring simultaneously on a plane... connections and enormous storage capacities... 3 And a childish thrill runs down your spine when you imagine that the waiting room might start to move if the announcement came over the loudspeaker, Back to BECOMING! (Mucha). Gudrun Inboden

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Learning for the Fun of It

Learning for the Fun of It 1 Jean Sousa Director of Interpretive Exhibitions and Family Programs, Art Institute of Chicago The Art Institute of Chicago has a long history of presenting exhibitions for young visitors using original