concrete sculptures, photographs
2013
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The work “There is no there there” presents an inventory of typical architectural fragments taken from existing situations in urban agglomerations. These omnipresent fragments of ordinariness and insignificance are captured through the media of photography, of architectural model sculptures and of model photography. The standardized elements of suburban architecture exist somewhere between euphoric modernist visions and dispassionate functionality, between hope and weariness. These ordinary fragments, which are at the same time exchangeable and universal – like an exterior staircase, the front of a single-family house, a garage forecourt, an entrance, the façade of an office building etc. – become the focus of attention. As models of everyday banality they turn into instruments of investigation of basic principles, problems and qualities of our built environment. Presented in such a way the banal gains significance, loses its ostensible implicitness, and reveals an ambiguity that is hidden behind its familiarity.
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