54 x Acryl auf Tubolit

Text: Maja Weyermann, 1995

54 x Acryl auf Tubolit [54 x Acrylic on Tubolit] consists of four parallel rows of scaffolding poles set one behind the other, each pole being 6 metres long. The rows are defined on either side by two elliptical columns.
The 54 vertical scaffolding poles, which have been stabilised by means of a steel construction, are set 40 cm apart, with each row diagonally offset from the next.
The individual poles are covered with Tubolit, a material for isolating pipes which has here been dyed in various colour tones and intensities. In selecting the colour values to correspond to the values of the spaces in between the scaffolding poles as well as those of the other poles, the space where the installation is located becomes the surface upon which the colour is shown while also simultaneously being visually suspended.
Whenever the viewer moves, different poles overlap, thereby creating new variant forms of the colourful images. The theme of space/surface area is picked up and inverted as an extension of painting by other means: while colour transforms painting from a surface area into three-dimensional space, in this case colour makes the space two-dimensional.
The site of 54 x Acryl auf Tubolit – the shell structure – depicts a space in the process of creating something that has already been defined two-dimensionally in plans and architectural drawings. The installation and its surroundings repeat the theme, but as a lateral inversion. The scaffolding tubes used in both cases are lines of colour that have the effect of dissolving space, while also serving as everyday construction aids.
54 x Acryl auf Tubolit was created as a temporary project from 2 to 10 December 1995 in the shell of an office building in Halensee, Berlin, designed by the architects Léon/Wohlhage.

Text in: 54 x Acryl auf Tubolit, exh. cat. Maja Weyermann (ed.), Berlin 1995.