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

 


archiv_77/87/97/07 | switch+ | Visual_concept

 


close

Mark Wallinger

*1959 in Chigwell, UK, lives and works in London



Project: Zone

The unspectacular traffic island in front of the Aegidiimarkt comprises the center of a circle that surrounds most of the inner part of the city. Mark Wallinger has installed a five-kilometer-long white thread that reaches a height of four and a half meters at Münster’s greatest elevation, even extending to fifteen meters over Lake Aa. A sculpture in the sky: the circle cuts through houses and bores its way through façades of buildings. Like many boundaries, Wallinger’s circle is not recognizable as such. When walking through town, passers-by will cross the thread many times but only notice it if they look upwards towards “higher things.” However, precisely this is the British sculptor’s intention. The Talmud, for example, calls it Eruv, an area precisely defined by customary rules within which some of the thirty-nine prohibitions by which orthodox Jews must abide during the Sabbath do not apply. Thus, the zone created by Mark Wallinger also represents a transcendent demarcation, just as for centuries the walls of monasteries separated the sacred from the secular. Unconsciously, the spectators are drawn into the circle, and as long as stay within its boundaries, they are part of the community.


Biography

The British artist Mark Wallinger became internationally known in 1999, when he designed a naturalist, life-sized statue of Christ for the huge, empty pillar in front of the National Gallery on London's Trafalgar Square. The figure, made of synthetic resin and white marble dust, donned with a crown of gilded barbed wire, sets a clear contrast to the heroic, national monuments on the square. It is, among others, a reference to the topic, which became Wallinger's main theme in the 1980s: the creation and representation of English national identity. His works, dating from the 1980s are, on the one hand, a deconstruction of the English self portrayal of the Thatcher era. On the other hand, they mark a clear distinction to the 'internationalism' of English art.

In the 1990s, Wallinger's work begins to focus on religion. Sequences from the Christian iconic memory are used to impregnate everyday situations with a religious meaning. But the video projects, photographs, and objects never transmit a clearly religious message. The selected Bible verses, songs or titles produce an ambiguity of allegories of everyday situations.

In his works Wallinger examines the fundamental human need for transcendental significance. As in the case of the statue of Christ, the spatial setting and the role of the beholder play an essential role in many of Wallinger's works. A copy of the figure of Christ erected in the Secession House in Vienna, confronts the public space with that of the semi-public. The contextual shift leads to a clear perceptional shift in the work of art.

close | top