It would be foolish to refer to the work of Reinhold Budde as overly
complicated; after all, the artist appears to operate with generally recognised
categories such as Minimalism, Abstract Realism or the re-enactment
strategy. However, resorting to the all too frequently evoked, fundamental
minimalist dictate – “a box is a box is a box” – proves inadequate in the
case of Reinhold Budde. With his exhibition “Bühne # Raum” in the Galerie
des Westens (GaDeWe), the artist demonstrates that art is far more than
simply nominating objects as art. Budde‘s installation states quite clearly
that although art can certainly exist apart from the dimensions “viewer” and
“space”, its “perception” and “impact” are founded on those two conditions.
Reproductions or even descriptions may thus convey some intimation
of the aesthetic concept, but they will never attain the level of physical
experience. Even though exhibitions in general and an exhibition by
Reinhold Budde in particular always accentuate the ephemeral nature of a
concept, it is still possible to identify parameters that define intellectually
the aesthetic perception of space behind it.
Reinhold Budde‘s artistic oeuvre is multilayered; consequently, we cannot
grasp his personally arranged exhibitions at a single glance. The exhibition
“Bühne # Raum” in the GaDeWe Bremen is not an installation that works
towards an optical climax, towards some grand trick. Instead, Budde has
developed a concept whereby the exhibition setting, the works installed
and the viewer him- or herself combine to create a balanced whole. The
attentive exhibition visitor is already integrated into the artistic concept
on the street in front of the gallery, through a mirror pane fitted
between two existing windows. This motif has scarcely appeared in
Reinhold Budde‘s previous work, but with it the artist makes clear even
before we enter the actual art space that this is going to be about more
than just an exhibition of artistically designed objects. The mirror not only
reflects the surrounding space but is also employed by Budde as a medium
to make us aware of our own corporeality – in short: it exhibits the viewer
as a viewer. In the exhibition situation realised in Bremen, the mirror motif
thus adopts the function of a prologue, as a leitmotif directing attention
from the outside space into the gallery‘s interior, expanding there into a
complex system of references.
And so the mirror reappears repeatedly at prominent points inside the
gallery space. Even while still entering the space, the viewer becomes
lost in the first, red-shimmering, reflecting area. Subsequently, initially it is
only as reflections that the viewer perceives the most important elements
of the main room, including the grey curtain hung behind the observer
on entering. The “image” of the curtain leads ultimately to a real length
of grey fabric hanging across one corner, which leads in turn
to a secluded niche marked by a stairhead. At the same time, the curtain
makes a direct reference to its pendant, to a striking red fabric element
at the opposite side of the space. Following neither the curtains nor the
reflecting surfaces but the red, black or yellow settings within the space,
we are called upon to perform new, quite differently oriented movements.
Very gradually, in this way a profile of movement is delineated within the
exhibition space, consisting of a system of lines that cross over each other
several times. The corners and turning points are formed by the artworks
positioned within the gallery space.
Reinhold Budde sets this pattern of movements in motion via a complex
system of references, which he directs using colour, materiality, and
finally forms and proportions. In this way the artist not only interlocks the
idiosyncratic, convoluted architecture of the exhibition space; he also
highlights clues pointing towards the historical dimension of the present
exhibition room. Regardless of any knowledge about the gallery space‘s
history as a former cabaret theatre, every visitor experiences the space
personally along with the theme of “theatre” or “stage” that was once so
present here: the two simple curtains made from heavy stage-molleton
absorbing both light and sound stand out clearly from the reflecting and
glossy surfaces of the other objects. They do not reflect the spatial situation
but divide it into a front and a behind, just as their regular gathering creates
concave and convex, rhythmicised inner spaces. In addition, the red of the
curtain as exhibited underlines an interpretation of the existing different
floor levels within the space as an auditorium and a stage.
At this point, however, the visitor‘s attention should be drawn to some
disruptions in the pattern staged by the artist, which take any clear drawing
of boundaries ad absurdum: the curtain is not mounted beside the stage but
on the stage and therefore does not separate the stage and the audience
so much as becoming part of the staged production in itself. While a stage
curtain, generally speaking, is defined primarily by its link with the walls,
via which the spatial situation is framed equally from both sides, Budde‘s
textile “spatial volume” describes a freestanding element with its own
corporeality – not framing but physically occupying the stage space. The
apparently clear division into auditorium and illusionary space is negated
by the “spatial volume” produced on the stage by Reinhold Budde together
with the objects placed behind the curtain. Those who actually wish to see
the exhibition as a whole are compelled, inevitably, to step into the staged
space themselves, indeed to pass actively through it in order to reach the
cabinet of images located beyond.
The spatial aesthetic concept that Budde unfolds in the GaDeWe Bremen,
concentrated in the image of the curtain, is symptomatically representative
of his work. It is as impossible to categorise Reinhold Budde‘s oeuvre
according to established art-historical terms, to examine it within classical
genre boundaries, as it is this particular exhibition. What is painting in the
work of Reinhold Budde? What is sculpture? Which work presents its own
functionality, something that would be central to any definition of design or
the architectural object? Since the 1990s the artist has been working with
the monochrome image process. Like many artists of Minimal Art before
him, he manages without painterly style, a form of painterly expression
that characterises the artist‘s individual hand. Reinhold Budde the artist
recedes behind his work, just as he abandons narration in favour of colour.
His monochrome works do not show anything – they exhibit.
While Minimal Art defines itself through a three-dimensional concept of the
work, whereby the artistic culmination point is an attempt to give plastic
form to colour, for Reinhold Budde painting itself was, is and will remain
his starting point. In his works Budde reflects on the medium of painting
as well as its conditions, also questioning them against categories such
as time and space – which initially may seem less suited to painting than
constitutive of the moving image, the performance or, for example, of the
traditional spatial arts such as architecture and sculpture. Initially, Budde‘s
speculations – following which a temporal dimension is inscribed into the
flat monochrome painting – culminated in his layered paintings: works that
consist of innumerable, successively overlapping bright-coloured layers
of paint, which only stop when achieving a deep black tone. Since 2006
Budde‘s layered paintings, which had been expanding gradually into the
surrounding space, finally moved away from the wall. Both the fronts and
reverses of the Aludibond sheets then used became picture carriers.
This programmatic spatialization of the image also led to a shift in the
focus of content. It was no longer a matter of what was represented in
the picture but of exhibiting the space in-between. Budde himself calls
this in-between a “space of resonance”, in which no less than the colour
itself is made to resonate. Works by artist Reinhold Budde thus oscillate
between the genres, moving between painting, sculpture and design. His
current exhibition-installation in the GaDeWe Bremen extends further and
further into the performative arts as well, inasmuch as the viewer‘s active
perception plays an increasingly important role for Budde‘s work. Colour
spaces are no longer simply created and exhibited, in a literal sense they
are given – as in the case of a glowing yellow pile of papers integrated into
the exhibition-installation at the GaDeWe – a stage on which to
interact with the viewer.
Using the stage-space focused upon in the exhibition at the GaDeWe
Bremen, Reinhold Budde challenges the viewer to sound out the relationship
between “stage” and “space”. In this respect the stage, as a theme explicitly
immanent in art, may begin to offer some basic clues – in the form of a
self-contained, dramatized space; but the title of the exhibition chosen by
the artist, “Bühne # Raum” (Stage # Space) makes the relationship explicit.
Reinhold Budde did not simply use the two definitive components together
for the exhibition situation at the GaDeWe, as “Stage Space”, and he did
not create a “stage-space”: nor has he linked the two concepts by means
of a linguistic operator in order to produce a system of basic continguity
or difference. Instead, the artist underlays his exhibition with the title of a
globally employed, digital communication system of virtual space. In this
system, the “hash tag” represents a marker in a distinctly defined chain
of symbols – the firmly established 140 characters of the Twitter platform
are well-known everywhere –, ensuring the “sloganization” or rather the
contextualizing of the concept identified in this way. In their marking and
linking of content, the digital “double crosses” of virtual space are linked to
the works of Reinhold Budde, which indicate the staged exhibition space
and make it legible. Budde marks genre boundaries with his artistic “hash
tags”, setting them into a context or interlocking them with each other.
If Budde‘s underlaid, complementary communication system is continued
logically, it reveals a hierarchization of content with which to define the
relations between stage and space. The “hash tag”, after all, is placed
in front of the word intended for marking. In the case of the exhibition
“Bühne # Raum”, therefore, the emphasis is clearly on the space! In this
specific defining of the relations between stage and space, Budde‘s
starting point is comparable with that of the controversial theatre-maker
Heiner Müller (1929 – 1995), who described the space as the starting point
of his creative approach: “The space is the starting point. It is a space
that examines the overall area – the auditorium and the stage itself –,
problematizing it and calling for two opposing movements, initiated by
mobility.”1
1 Josef Szeiler and Mark Lammert in conversation. “Es gibt nichts Fremderes als
einen Text von Heiner Müller”, in: Wolfgang Stroch and Klaudia Ruschkowski (eds.):
Die Lücke im System. Philoktet Heiner Müller Werkbuch, pp. 191 – 193, here p. 192.