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BOXES beyond borders

Throne for a Smart Princess

the box is turned around
the helplessness of a woman is turned around.

a throne is created
creativity and self-confidence are experienced and rewarded.

Following the idea of Grimm’s fairy tale, the princess had only one chance to get her golden ball from the depth of the well: she had to promise to share her whole life with the helper, a frog.  As a smart woman she does not want to accept this type of dependence and help and so she finds a new solution to solve the problem.

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From its first moment, the shape of the small box permitted several associations and possibilities, but the point was not to alter the object per se but to have it remain in its artificiality, a box-like structure with a cover, closed with a rubber band, which was handed to me.  Intuitively, I decided to confront this object with pictorial presentations that I had selected.  In this process I begin by thinking of some imaginary associations.

This lead directly to a comparison of three objects, one after another. (Where does the wooden object “belong,” what can it be, or mean?)  The pictures I have chosen in the frames are to be understood as an “offer,” which relates the different levels of representation to one another.  Thus, a space is produced in which things can be observed in terms of conception and content or else in terms of space and form.

The inside of the “box” projects itself visually upon the pictures as they are seen.  The concrete object serves as a “medium” of the continual transformation between things and pictures.  Understood in this way, the wooden object can be regarded, abstractly, as a picture, just as a picture can be understood as an object. The positioning of the two picture frames with the wooden box creates as a whole a model of one’s own perception or of the possibilities of perception, and the relational positioning or the relational viewing of things.

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In keeping with my usual approach, I experimented with the material that was sent to me: a small wooden box, a cover, and a rubber band. A spatial sculpture resulted from this. It unites a rigid structure, a hollow shape, an inner space, and a band connecting it, all which simultaneously groups surfaces and spaces. The box is an autonomous small sculpture, but at the same time it is also imaginable as a model for a large-scale sculpture.

Bluebeard’s New Room

Continuation of the Bluebeard Legend:

In a crystal-clear night in February 1996, Bluebeard suddenly appeared in front of me and asked me to design for him a new and secret room which would no longer bring a woman misfortune, but would fan the flames of her yearning. I nodded assent and immediately started working. I built a blue-shimmering space out of mirrors and semi-translucent walls with numerous peepholes. Deep inside I enclosed my secret. I nailed tight the transparent entrance doors. In the pale light of morning, Bluebeard returns. In his curiosity he bent over the little box, — and then he dissolved in blue smoke. [Bluebeard’s Redemption]