Ausgabe 02-2008 als PDF vonhundert_2008-02_komplett.pdf

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Re-shifted Re-contextualisations
⁄ Kirsten Pieroth in der Galerie Klosterfelde
Re-contextualisation is a strategy taken for granted by
younger artists today, and audiences, used to Simon Starling’s
convoluted eco-narratives or Slominski’s form-determining
absurdities, are well practiced in extrapolating hidden
histories and alternative identities from within the mute
objects displayed before them. Kirsten Pieroth has long
displayed a considerable dexterity when it comes to such
re-contextualising displacement of objects. In the past, her
transferals have as often taken a literary or historical bent as a
strictly physical, or geographical one. The result is a reversal
of expectations that requires an equally dexterous imaginative
response from the viewer.
In this, her first solo exhibition in Berlin for four years, Pieroth
presents three stories of relocation or transformation, and
their sculptural results. In the first piece „Untitled (Loan)“,
2007, the focus is on beaurocratic systems at work within
the art institution. Wall-mounted photographs document
the de-installation of an item in one prestigious museum,
and its careful re-installation in another, complete with all
the regulation art-handler’s gloves and measuring tapes necessary
to meet the standards of institutional art-handling. It
is, however, not an artwork itself being handled, but its label.
And not just any label from any artwork, but the Louvre’s
exhibition label for Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa.
This work was initially made for ‘Learn to Read’, a group
exhibition at the Tate Modern, where the wall label was exhibited
alone, creating a metonymic relationship between
the institutional label and the work itself, whereby the label
would, through the viewer’s response, conjure an image of
the famous painting, while drawing attention to the history
embedded its many different names. As such, it functioned
almost like a Lawrence Weiner wall text in its ability to paint
the artwork clearly in mind of viewer. Here, however, the
label itself is not displayed but rather the documents and
documentation relating to its loan. Installed with extreme
precision, these build another layer of transference: the paperwork
and photographs are displayed with an equal care
and attention to detail, although they exist at yet another
remove from the artwork and have a value accorded purely
through association and anecdotal evidence.
Another act of transference occurs in the neighbouring
room, where a tall wooden tower stands, a hide lifted from
its original location in the Brandenburg countryside. Small
snapshots document its dismantling, while a heap of sawnoff
pieces of wood and rusty nails are evidence of the height
alteration needed to reconstruct it in its new interior location.
Strangely, it is not surprising to find it here. It assimilates
immediately, and even its corrugated tin roof, leaning
casually against the wall, effortlessly takes on the truth-tomaterials
of a minimalist sculpture. Surveillance, watchtowers,
an altered viewing perspective are associations that
come to mind, but mostly it just stays itself, with an added
dose of intentionality. Is this a sign of a jaded acceptance of
anything that finds its way within the four walls of a gallery?
The institutional machinations involved in procuring
the Mona Lisa label prove somehow more intriguing and
conceptually concentrated than the physical removal of this
large, rustic object.
The final work in this show is tucked away in the office, behind
the gallerist’s desk, and is a return to the punning quality
familiar from earlier works by Pieroth. A weighty, oldfashioned
black safe sits against the wall. Only on opening it
is it clear that it is no longer a safe; is, in fact, no longer safe
at all, as it has been converted into a small oven. A concealed
pipe leads through the wall behind it to the outside and a
discrete flat-screen opposite the safe/oven shows a video of
the chimney protruding from the wall outside, happily puffing
away. This object modestly insinuates a range of comic
anecdotal incidents, of gallerists destroying incriminating
documents, or the inadvertent roasting of stacks of dirty
art-world cash. Though the thing seems to stay the same,
everything around it changes. A critique of the meaning or
use-value of an object is implied that extends to the invented
meaning of a work of art. Not only does Pieroth refer to
the particular histories or contexts of the individual objects
presented here, but also to a collective history of sculpture.
Her re-contextualisations are installed or arranged with such
precision that they take on a newly independent sculptural
identity that allows them to be related, laterally, to a history
of sculptural form, whether the conceptual wall text,
the artepovera sculpture to the re-made ready-made of the
late twentieth century. Kirsty Bell
Kirsten Pieroth, Galerie Klosterfelde,
Zimmerstraße 90/91, 24.11.–16.02.2008