ANDREA PICHL - AUSSCHLIESSLICH ODER / January 31 – March 10, 2012
Opening: January 28, 2012, 6-9 pm
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KROME Gallery presents new sculptural works and drawings by Berlin-based artist Andrea Pichl in a show entitled “ausschießlich oder”.
Spatially based art-installations by Andrea Pichl are questioning the architectural concepts of home and living space contrived by Modernism and still influential nowadays.
The exhibition leads with a group of large scale sculptures: “zwischen”. The title refers to the peculiar capsule of void, coming into being as a neither foreseen nor wanted space in-between when a right-angled prefab slab building is erected next to a less regular pre-war apartment house. As a rule, the gaps are usually hidden from sight with a cover-up extension of the facade. The rustic plywood models of Andrea Pichl visualise the ulterior bowels of this spatial phenomenon of urban habitat, revealing the confluence of the standardised and the heterogenous in its aloof coherence and dynamic irregularity.
The sculptural work “weg“ deals with a particular aspect of Berlin’s architectural history - the recently demolished building of DDR Ministry of Housing. Plasterboards cladded with black and white detail shots of the edifice are arranged in an installation, which explore the principles of panelised building systems through the lens of fragility and deconstruction.
“Wieder“ is a sequel to Andrea Pichl’s installation “doublebind”, commissioned by Hamburger Bahnhof, Museum of Contemporary Art, Berlin for the thematic exhibition “Architektonika”. The minimalistic sculpture, more than two meters high, is a reflection on the WBS 70, the meanwhile notorious DDR era prefab housing series for studio and one bedroom flats. Composed as an architectural model at a 1:6 scale, the installation renders the ground-plans of the building as a rhythmically mesmerising, but socially depressing metamorphose of living space.
The sculptural works are accompanied by a series of drawings. These are pencil studies of building facades - a repetitive litany of patterns cast in concrete panels, and a vague notion of the fragile human lives behind them.
“Standardised construction models have had a grotesquely dysfunctional impact on the living space. Andrea Pichl focuses on isolated details of normative architecture as peculiarities inexplicable from the viewpoint of rationalism, and turns them into sculptural ensembles. Irregularities, which normally are not expected to be there, but are still present like the preposterous survival of some almost extinct habitat, are in term used as a basis for a new artistic system. The inherent paradoxes of such a methodology, which reduce the standardised and repetitive architectural components to absurdity, are also present in the title of her latest exhibition: ‘ausschließlich oder’.” (Ludwig Seyfarth)
Andrea Pichl
zwischen
2012
plywood
variable dimensions
Andrea Pichl
wieder
2012
plywood
variable dimensions
Andrea Pichl
weg
2012
sheetrock
200 x 60 cm / 79 x 24 in
Andrea Pichl
Nr.14
2009
graphite on laid paper
33 x 33 cm / 13 x 13 in
Andrea Pichl
Nr. 19, Nr. 16, Nr. 11, Nr. 15
2009
graphite on laid paper
each 33 x 33 cm / 13 x 13 in