Invited Artists



Pawel_Althamer | Michael_Asher | Nairy_Baghramian | Guy_Ben-Ner | Guillaume_Bijl | Martin_Boyce | Jeremy Deller | Michael_Elmgreen und Ingar_Dragset | Hans-Peter_Feldmann | Dora_Garcia | Isa_Genzken | Dominique_Gonzalez-Foerster | Tue_Greenfort | David_Hammons | Valérie_Jouve | Mike_Kelley | Suchan Kinoshita | Marko_Lehanka | Gustav_Metzger | Eva_Meyer und Eran_Schaerf | Deimantas_Narkevicius | Bruce_Nauman | Maria_Pask | Manfred_Pernice | Susan_Philipsz | Martha_Rosler | Thomas_Schütte | Andreas_Siekmann | Rosemarie_Trockel | Silke_Wagner | Mark_Wallinger | Clemens von Wedemeyer | Annette_Wehrmann | Pae_White

 


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Michael Asher

*1943 Los Angeles, lives and works in Los Angeles




Project: Installation Münster (Caravan)

A travel trailer is a travel trailer – what else? In Münster, at least, it can also become the icon of a major international exhibition. Every ten years during the summer, a seemingly ownerless travel trailer appears in the streets of Münster, standing each week somewhere else. Every Monday, the day when museums are closed to the public, the trailer is relocated. Michael Asher selected the locations back in 1977. In 2007, the American artist will realize his trailer project for the fourth time, making him the only one to have taken part in every edition of the Skulptur Projekte.

The model of the trailer, Eriba Familia BS, may be considered a vintage today. But over the space of thirty years, this installation has proved to be a simple and impressive long-term study of the city of Münster. As a free-standing sculptural object set in relation to its surroundings, the trailer – which has been documented with photographs since 1977 – reveals the changes that have occurred in the city.


Some of the places that still existed in 1977 have disappeared. Indeed, in 2007 the trailer will remain in a garage for five weeks because its former parking spaces are gone. Asher’s project, it seems, has a unique seismographic quality.
Overview of parking positions

Biography

Michael Asher has participated in the first three runs of the sculpture projects. He used the same methodology in 1977, 1987 and 1997. By positioning a caravan on different locations in the city of Münster, he develops a consistent setting for varying perspectives on the city. The minimalist-conceptual and early contextual game that began in 1977 became a lens for a model of urban development in 1987 and 1997. The immediate juxtaposition of the photographs, taken at the respective locations, shows if and to what extent urban contexts have changed in the last 30 years. Asher is, furthermore, interested in the aspect of mobility, produced by the constellation of standardised, immutable forms and changing sites: In the course of 30 years, the same caravan passes through different sites of the urban environment, without sustaining any transformation.

In reference to art museums, Asher calls his experimental design and his method of changing perspectives, "dislocations". The artist wants to enhance our awareness of the automatic production of ideas concerning order and layout through shifts in space and modifications.

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