SLIDING SELF ON SHELF_DISPLAY_23, installation using ceramics, sound, photograph, found objects, fringe curtains

Photography: © CHROMA

SLIDING SELF ON SHELF

Asphaltfieber, Antinous, Display… The names succeed on the storefront at Mansteinstrasse 16 in Berlin Schöneberg as to reveal the momentary function of the premise, since 1890. From a cab company to a copy shop, from a coal store to an AIDS prevention center or the current art school and studio, the occupancies follow one another and leave their marks on the site. A long step splits the room lengthwise; corner molding, once installed to conceal construction joints, come to a screeching halt to make way for an angle or the large windowcase. Chandeliers, if there were any, have made space to cold white neon lights while leaving their ornamentation behind. Though, the reading of the items is blurred, as their functions have faded with the disappearance of the activities.

Undefined architectural elements, forgotten ornamentation, furnishings without specified roles or empty plinths is Marianne Mueller's matter for her exhibition Sliding Self on Shelf at Display, in Berlin. They stay in the delicate position of being both parts of the architectures they integrate and independent features that have no architectural function as such. She gives them space to exist. More specifically, it is here the wall shelf - referring wether to medieval wall plinths belonging to liturgical furnishings, sometimes left empty, to the domestic shelf once cluttered with books or personal belongings or its industrial design history - which becomes the keystone and the pretext for the exhibition. Their special status enables them to embody, either wholly or metonymically, emotions, dreamlike and phantasmagorical apparitions, or simply the memory of works that have existed, disappeared or have been fantasized. Once stripped of their original functions, attention can also be focused on their plastic qualities.

Marie DuPasquier