mixed media; total: 580 x 1,745 x 726 cm
„The city as a stage, the buildings their protagonists, the audience on the catwalk: Christian Odzuck’s installation „Atlanten“ supports the utopia of an artistic world, at the top of which stands architecture as a universal discipline. With this work, the Essen-based artist takes up the ideas of the „Glass Chain“, an exchange of letters between the expressionist architect Bruno Taut and like-minded people such as Walter Gropius. Ideas included the transpositioning of the Alps with buildings made of glass, of crystalline fragmentation, in order to reflect – from an artistic point of view – the social upheavals of the 1920s.
Entering the installation one becomes part of the radically open discussion: from a solar-powered lantern one makes its ways on an elevated footbridge into a pavilion. The open walls of which, made up of crystal-like triangular frames bolted together, resemble a spatial sketch. The material used, largely left in their raw state, make it clear: this is more about a blueprint, about an idea. Questions are raised such as: What can architecture offer as a field of dialogue for art? What influence does it have on the transformation of society? What remains of artistic utopias when visions already fail in reality? Odzuck’s „Atlanten“ invites us to continue the „Glass Chain“ here and now. Where else but in the reform-architectural Moltkeviertel would there be a better place to do so?“
(Tankred Stachelhaus)
„I’m interested in ´lost places´: cordoned-off buildings left to their own devices, which exude a morbid charm and tell stories when you wander through them without a permit. But these places also show that architecture can serve a function without its assigned purpose – even if it only stands for itself.“
(Christian Odzuck)
More about Christian Odzuck´s Atlanten hier.
This project is sponsored and supported by Kunststiftung NRW, Kulturstiftung Essen, Allbau Stiftung, Sparkassenlotterie „PS-Sparen und Gewinnen“, Vestocor GmbH, Nolte Ingenieur Holzbau GmbH, Elvermann Schaltechnik GmbH, Ingenieurbüro Lars Römling, and Feldhaus Stahl- und Metallbau GmbH & Co KG
