Field
mapping of flags
From floor flags onto the wall and to the net metaphor Johannes Lothar Schršder about the exhibition "Periph or beyond the border outland beginsÒ by Marnie Moldenhauer I. Transformations and interpretations Three works are exhibited in the main room that represent the EINSTELLUNGSRAUM's console and the showcase platform that are plated with flags and have been left over from its former interior design as flower shop. Marnie Moldenhauer transferred the arrangement of the tiles and gaps to dodder tissue and interpreted the surface as painting. The results of this process now are now hanging on the wall tilted andand turned which is why one has to retrace the horizontal and vertical movements in order to compare the individual tiles with their representations.To begin with it is necessary to establish orientation so that the attention to detail is possible to be noticed with that the artist has depicted the outline of each flag and the gaps with acrylic paint. Invented are - in contrast - the titian white of the gaps as well as the colourfulness of the surfaces of the actually mainly creme coloured, non-polished and lightly uneven flags of the natural stone from the Franconian Jura. The palette reminds me of geo- graphical maps where fields and vegetations levels are represented: like forest in dark green, meadowland in light green, steppe in ocher, dessert in umbra or glacier in white. Red and blue dots stand for communities and lakes. Moldenhauer says that a second level would have been layed into space by this because the representations doubled the succinct surfaces of the interior design from the 60s and shifted them space-related. With that Moldenhauer touches works by Rachel Whitehead or Heidi Bucher who for example undertook casting of whole rooms in concrete or latex in order to transfer them into different contexts or to make them waving and floating1 between trees hanging from a crane. This technique of securing of traces and moulding is not carried out by |
Moldenhauer
primarily to secure but is reapplied as a
pattern and changed by painting. If with Bucher
it is about flying of room skin then here it is
the painting that leaves the recording of
moulding and casting behind and shifts it to a
differently codified level.Whereas
with Bucher significant material traces still remain on
the plasticor rubber emulsions - thus the negative form
- Moldenhauer orientates herself with the positive
traced side which serves as her pattern in order
to include a colourful level of own symbolizations which
breaks down abstractly the impression of the room and
changes it by relation to cartographical conventions.
In its Two-dimensionality related to the given
technical installation of the room here on the other
hand the spacial and chronological proliferation of art
from painting to action and installation ever since the
1950s is withdrawn here whereby a new light falls
onto the specific characteristics of the return of room
to plain surface. II. Indentification of craftsmanship and references to interior design The work points to the covering of the consoles which in the Einstellungsraum due to its former interior design as flower shop preserves an aesthetic that now has become history; because the flags from the Franconian Jura. are a typical appearance in the interior design of the 20th. century. The quarry company of Solnhofen and Kehlheim produced the lime flags effectively as accumulated waste from the exploitation of especially thick flags from the finey graded and homogenous layers of the Franconian calcareous schist of which lithographic stones were made for the printing industry. When the faster offset typography came out on top the worldwide high demand lead to large amounts of leavings up into the 1960s with thinner lime flags interspersed with inclusions that could be marketed as building material. Fissures, voids and inclusions of fossils lent the stones have a decorative potential that could be boosted still by sanding and polishing of the surfaces so that there was demand for Solnhofen flag lime for floor and stair covering, moldings and window sills. The aesthetics of this often used material could be increased in addition by skills of craftsmanship and the compositional work of the tiler who knew how to organize the existing flags with their characteristic breaking edges onto the specified fields so that a net of gaps corresponded appealingly with the flag surfaces. |
1 Heidi Bucher: "Hautraum
(Ahnenhaus) [skin room (forbearer's house)] 1980-1982", in: "Heidi Bucher / Mother of Pearl", Migros Museum fuer Gegenwartskunst, ZŸrich 2004 (museum for contemporary art in Zurich) |
Vernissage |
2 The three so far in Solnhofen found
fossils of the prehistoric bird Archaeopteryx are
famous. In addition there are also complete fishes and
almost complete ....plants in the local stone quary
museums and in natural historic collections allover the
world. |
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