21er-Haus
previous page   last page
overview

INVOLUTO

date: 2013/14
type: space blanket
material: heat-reflective sheeting
design: Thomas Feichtner
producer: 21er Haus, Austria

Winter weather conditions make it necessary to provide sculptures with appropriate protection. For the protective housing of the sculpture project by Heimo Zobernig and Franz West in its Sculpture Garden, 21er Haus invited Thomas Feichtner to come up with a contemporary and sculpturally oriented solution. So Feichtner, working with insulating foil of a type often used by alpine rescue teams and in high-performance sports, has realized these works’ “packaging” as protective wrappers in the truest sense of the word. The sculptures by Franz West and their closely related pedestals by Heimo Zobernig can therefore still be experienced, but with a whole new aesthetic character. Rather than building simple wooden constructions of the kind used for fountain sculptures, Feichtner has lent these works a new surface that does justice not only to the objects’ protection, but also to their shapes. Thus, the cold season of the year sees this discursive element of Zobernig’s project patio – scultura – basamento, which deals with the unity of sculpture and pavilion architecture, expanded into the field of design. Thomas Feichtner operates here quite experimentally by causing the design product as such to disappear, since it makes only a temporary appearance lasting a few months. Despite all the glamour that radiates from the sparkling gold foil, it is the idea of protection that remains paramount in this project. The design appears to disappear, to be operating at its own outer limits. And at the same time, Feichtner expands Zobernig’s discursive work on the relationship between architecture and sculpture while also providing an ironic take on Franz West’s play on aesthetics and their significance in modernist sculpture.