Kölnischer Kunstverein

Lutz Bacher, Michael Beutler, Anne Bourse, Holm von Czettritz, Gina Folly, Dozie Kanu, Nuri Koerfer, Enzo Mari / Malik Agachi, Vaclav Pozarek, Claus Richter, Iris Touliatou, Rosemarie Trockel / Thea Djordjadze / Gerda Scheepers, Nicole Wermers, Joseph Zehrer, Heimo Zobernig

Furnishing a home is not inherently political. People don’t just want to eat off the floor, so they set up a table and pull up some chairs, to give the matter a certain form. As well as bringing some order to the satisfaction of needs like eating or sleeping – for which tables and beds are helpful – there’s also getting dressed, and already they need a wardrobe for their clothes. But furniture isn’t just about managing your life. Furnishing is also self-presentation. If you read or at least buy books, others are supposed to see that too. On a bookshelf you are putting your taste on display. But your character is revealed above all in your coat-stand and curtains. If you don’t have the latter, you either have two left hands or are an exhibitionist. In sum, furnishings explain even more than sex why the private is political. How I have chosen my furniture says a lot about me – as does my choice of all products. I am presenting myself, and my position on the social ladder becomes clear, with all the advantages and disadvantages that entails. If you furnish in poverty, you’ll have fewer bad buys, but you rapidly start treading that fine line of the stopgap solution.

The exhibition Superfurniture does not presume to resolve these problems. Rather, I have tried to find furniture-like objects for a helpless friend. Someone who, deep in his unconscious, refuses to live the way we live. The furniture I have selected for him is supposed to tempt him and balk at the norm, just as his own psyche does. It was clear to me that the furnishings he’d agree to would have to be as sombre and complex as the reality of Germany. They should not beautify anything and the furniture would quietly hum along with Hildegard Knef, I need a change of scenery. Switching on Joseph Zehrer’s lamps, he’d think: Why weep, when the sky’s so close. But instead of ascending he will seat himself on Vaclav Pozarek’s crate and listen to the roar of the traffic in Hahnenstraße, which some people in Cologne would like to tear up to resolve problems a little more quickly. Faced with Nuri Koerfer’s glossy bookshelves he would start talking to the donkeys, asking them if they’re really into reading, or if it wouldn’t be better to put some straw on the shelves. After this conversation he would recline on one of Anne Bourse’s silk mattresses, although Heimo Sobernig’s mattress might perhaps reward him by leaving dirty marks on his clothing. After a fantastical dream in which he encounters Claus Richter’s sleeping furniture which, like him, refuses any functional role, he makes himself a coffee under one of Nicole Wermer’s extractor hoods, then does a few laps, cup in hand, on Michael Beutler’s soft carpet, against the background chirping of the imaginary bird in Dozie Kanu’s cage. He’ll think about watching a film later inside one of Gina Folly’s cardboard boxes. All this activity warms him up and he goes to stand in front of Iris Touliatou’s fans, where his keys hang jingling, because he no longer locks up his house, so as to be no longer lonely. And if he did want to be alone for once, he would heave his behind onto one of Holm von Czettritz’s plump cushions, in order to think: The day is drawing to a close and soon my dreams will bring even more furniture.

Curated by Valérie Knoll