Beate Engl: APPARAT
26 Sep - 23 Nov 2014
In her solo exhibition in the Lichthof of the Badischer Kunstverein, the artist Beate Engl shows various works revolving around symbols of representation and propaganda. The functionality and order of the institutional exhibition space is taken to the point of absurdity, as Engl installs a large flag made of mirror-plated steel, which casts a distorted reflection of the surroundings. At the same time, the flag is divested of its national symbolism and thus also of its political content. Now, it is primarily a sculptural intervention and reinforces the hierarchy of the gaze already specified by the Atrium's architecture.
The way Beate Engl deals with space is significant in this central work of the exhibition. She grasps public and institutional space, in its dense ensemble of social, political and formal inscriptions, as a rigid system to be called into question and that, most of all, is to be artistically appropriated. To this end she makes use of sound, light and audio, but also of self-developed machines or apparatuses that imbue the location with a new function.
The second work conceived for the exhibition is this kind of apparatus. With a device that combines an overhead projector and a music box mechanism, a hole-punched text is projected into the space and played by the music box. Following the radio-orators by the Latvian artist Gustav Klucis from the 1920s, who combined loudspeakers with text slogans on a stand, Engl has designed a new, transportable agit-prop object, which links the function of the political speech with the nostalgia of a music box.
Curated by Anja Casser.
Beate Engl (*1973, Regen) lives and works in Munich.
She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich with Prof. Olaf Metzel, at the School of the Arts Institute of Chicago and at the Bauhaus University Weimar.
The way Beate Engl deals with space is significant in this central work of the exhibition. She grasps public and institutional space, in its dense ensemble of social, political and formal inscriptions, as a rigid system to be called into question and that, most of all, is to be artistically appropriated. To this end she makes use of sound, light and audio, but also of self-developed machines or apparatuses that imbue the location with a new function.
The second work conceived for the exhibition is this kind of apparatus. With a device that combines an overhead projector and a music box mechanism, a hole-punched text is projected into the space and played by the music box. Following the radio-orators by the Latvian artist Gustav Klucis from the 1920s, who combined loudspeakers with text slogans on a stand, Engl has designed a new, transportable agit-prop object, which links the function of the political speech with the nostalgia of a music box.
Curated by Anja Casser.
Beate Engl (*1973, Regen) lives and works in Munich.
She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich with Prof. Olaf Metzel, at the School of the Arts Institute of Chicago and at the Bauhaus University Weimar.