Dr. Ingmar Lähnemann
FOYER
Reinhold Budde‘s installation “Foyer” adopts a space- and site-speci-fic approach to refer to the entrance area of the Städtische Galerie Bremen, the only space on the ground floor used for exhibition purposes. It forms a prelude to every presentation in the gallery. This space has a number of specific features which are related, among other things, to its function of welcoming the public and introducing them to the respective exhibition and its particular theme. However, there is no typical reception situation: no counter and no staff to greet visitors, provide general information or answer questions. All this happens only after you have already viewed the works of art in the entrance area and then climbed to the upper floor via the broad staircase, which is itself a very striking feature of the two-part space on the ground floor. It starts, tapering in a striking fashion, in the bigger part of the space, and leads upwards across the smaller section. What remains beneath it is a strange non-place, occasionally used for the presentation of works of art but never part of the public‘s customary viewing pattern.
A glass vestibule with double doors leads into this area, which actually has three different-sized windows on the right: however, they are closed for most exhibitions to keep the room dark, since the entrance area is the only part of the gallery suitable for video projections, which need a certain degree of blackout. For this reason, the glass vestibule and the narrow windows surrounding it were darkened using wooden panels long ago. Thus, a typical impression gained by visitors entering the Städtische Galerie Bremen is to face a deserted, dark space, dominated in many cases by a large-screen video projection opposite the entrance. Impressive as this may be on occasion, such abrupt immersion in the art being exhibited can be confusing before there is chance to absorb information about the exhibition.
In his installation, Reinhold Budde takes this same, typical impression of the entrance area as a starting point for his work in the exhibition “konkret bremen”, which–for the first of two sections of the exhibition–forms the prelude to and foundation for the other 13 artistic positions on display. In a procedure currently customary for his works, Reinhold Budde employs his artistic interventions to establish a relation to the space‘s specific characteristics. In this case, he brings light and colour into the usual darkness of the entrance area, he transfers a material from the external area to the inside, and he creates a connection between the two distinct parts of the space. This process consists of references and, especially in the area under the stairs, also relates to the difficult situation for presenting artworks.
A new lighting situation is created when Reinhold Budde “guts” the cube of the vestibule, i.e. he removes the darkening wooden panels. The white wooden structure between the windows is repainted and a narrow window next to the vestibule is covered with a yellow film, creating a gleaming yellow stripe which leads into the space when sunlight falls on it accordingly. This stripe points directly to the striking setting that Reinhold Budde has created on the opposite wall, adjacent to the staircase. Here, we find a pile of 100 bright yellow paper sheets, which appear as a flat yellow block on the floor, fluctuating in their materiality between radiant monochrome and a vaguely discernible paper structure.
On the large, continuous longitudinal wall to the right of the entrance, the artist has had scaffolding installed that almost fills the entire wall, with three horizontal beams each bearing vertical zigzag struts that resemble triangles behind the red gauze that Reinhold Budde has stretched in front of the entire structure. On the one hand, this semi- transparent fabric leaves the construction behind it visible; on the other hand, it manifests as a large monochrome surface, mainly due to the dominant, strong colouration. The material is a direct reference to the situation just outside of the gallery, where the characteristic former water tower, now the building‘s stair tower, has been scaffolded for a long time due to the need for renovation and is also covered with the white gauze typically used on construction sites.
These site-specific settings–each of which refers to a particular characteristic of the space–are extended in the smaller part of the entrance area under the stairs by a bracing of the two side walls, which consists of two black horizontal profiles and a central, double-sided mirror framed within them. On the reverse, which is only visible from the stairs looking down, there is a shiny red mirror surface that immediately creates a colour reference to the large red gauze area in the other part of the space. Reinhold Budde has mounted a neutral mirror on the front. By means of the mirror, he draws attention to an absurd spatial element: the building‘s former, broken-off staircase, which leads into nothingness today, and which artist Robert van de Laar has provided with a permanent installation, a black glass over-moulding of the steps that turns the strange spatial element into a sculptural body. The entire feature is at overhead height and emphatically opens up a perspective into the space under the stairs in this setting. Although it has no quality inviting us to stay and does not really seem to belong to the exhibition area, it is so large that it claims some spatial autonomy. At the same time, the struts obviously create a barrier to the space, although this is revoked in regard to the viewer by the reflecting surface.
The specific space is reflected in a particular, immediate way onto the back of the bracing under the stairs. This side is equipped with a red mirror, which creates a slightly blurred image of the surroundings, but clearly directs our view away from the surface into the surrounding space, thus providing a further indication of the central theme of the installation as a whole. The mirror is hung so high that the viewer cannot see himself in it. Nevertheless, the public, the recipients are a central element of the work. On route between the floors, the red, shiny mirror surface suddenly floating under the stairs makes visitors pause and directs their attention to the striking architecture of the staircase. At the same time, it allows countless fresh insights.
In all of the artist‘s interventions in the entrance area of the Städtische Galerie, a direct spatial reference becomes clear; one with spatial-analytical characteristics. This is evident, for example, in the reworking of the vestibule, which is made visible as a sculptural body by cleaning and painting the structure. The new, uniform black carpet that the artist uses here also reinforces the impression of a construction with sculptural quality. At the same time, its functionality as a transition between outside and inside is emphasized, making the spatial significance of the vestibule more tangible.
Similarly, the large red gauze surface functions by overwhelming the viewer with its monochrome quality, in which the artist evokes a citation of colour field painting. Here, the boundless colouration of a Barnett Newman painting and his notion of the sublime–the sensual experience of those whose visual reception alone cannot grasp the painting–is a means of confronting the viewer, in order to simultaneously engage him and offer several strong visual features in space, such as the yellow pile of paper.
Viewers are made aware of their own movement and their paths in space in the various stations provided by Reinhold Budde. The specific setting is conveyed with all its architectural and functional characteristics, but also as–and for–the viewer‘s own spatial experience. To a large extent, in the recipient‘s reference to his work, the artist attempts to create a place at all through the experience of this specific space. The title of the multi-part installation is significant in this context. It derives from the rather euphemistic naming of the space, as this entrance area has little in common with a foyer, as has been indicated above. It makes it all the more exciting to interpret Reinhold Budde‘s multi-part intervention as a foyer or as the creation of a foyer.
There are non-representational associations with classical foyers, as we know them from company headquarters, banks or hotels. Or from museums, of course. Then, the large red monochrome surface becomes not only a reference to overwhelming colour field painting à la Barnett Newman, but also the identification of a reception point. Where there is normally a counter, reception desk or similar, there is red braced scaffolding, which actually accentuates and structures the room in the same way as a reception desk does. It is just as much a citation of the large abstract works of art that often adorn foyers as it is of the reception desks that one turns to as an entrant. In this reading, the exposed white painted porch also has the effect of abstractly adopting the typical entrance area of a foyer. With double doors and a lot of glass, this part of the space represents–in foyers–the openness of the respective institution to the public, which permits glimpses into an enticing interior, although one cannot avoid the feeling that it is actually a sluice for the purpose of distinction. By marking this element as an abstract spatial body, however, Reinhold Budde counteracts this feeling, although an aesthetic-cathartic function is certainly intended in this rather purist section of the space. However, by referring to the scaffolding outside, the artist immediately removes any overly formal-aesthetic emphasis.
Elements such as the yellow pile of paper can be understood in this sense as details of the overall installation creating a new quality of stay for visitors, which–although on an aesthetic-sensual level–certainly have a greater impact than the generally somewhat odd seating arrangements with accompanying magazines in the foyer of a bank or the lobby of an hotel. The fact that every representational functionality is renounced here, and the trap fallen into by minimalist sculptures–of getting lost in the field of design and architecture–is avoided: this leads to the creation of the specific space, and its particular location and functionality as a place with a distinct quality of stay, through concrete settings that relate equally to the artist, his work, and the viewer, and can be negotiated accordingly. In future, those who have accessed the lower exhibition space and entrance area of the Städtische Galerie Bremen together with Reinhold Budde‘s “Foyer” will deal with this space in a different way, even if the installation remains a temporary gesture.
