We work with artists form Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Taiwan through virtual exchange.
I-Chen Lai
I-Chen Lai (Taiwan) is interested in the idea of producing art audience. When she spent time in her exhibition at the Taipe Biennial in 2016, Lai found that people visited the museum for many different reasons other than the art. The artist started to develop the thought that there might be no art audience unless she creates it. And this can be achieved by involving people in the art production.
For the ‘Garage’, Lai invites you to participate in her project “Botanical Encounters” based on the 16th century handdrawn plant anthology “Codex Kentmanus”. The book’s author, Johannes Kentmann, was a German researcher who studied botanical gardens in Italy with his laymen drawings. I-Chen Lai uses the book as inspiration to create an exchange of people’s own drawings and their stories. You are invited to create modern time drawings of local plants and exchange them with other participants in Germany, Taiwan and around the world.
Bastian Hoffmann
Bastian Hoffmann (Germany) breaks with common notions of productivity. His work deals with simple problems in the everyday life. However, what he does stubbornly rejects the conventional logics of problem solving. He invests the greatest precision and effort for reaching results that rather seem absurd. To mediate his conceptual, mostly temporary work, he uses the form of online video tutorials, which can now be found on all common video platforms. In his work “How to turn your workplace into a sheet of paper”, for example, Hoffmann shows an alternative approach to use your home office.
In the ‘Garage’, we will show his videos as inspiration for people to build their own conceptual works or to think differently about what labor and effort means. For example one could imagine lots of different forms of effort and labor that are more accepted in our society but not necessarily have to make sense.
Nikolas Vionnet & Wouter Sibum
Nicolas Vionnet (Switzerland) & Wouter Sibum (Netherlands) create objects that reveal histories, meanings and hidden potential of public spaces. Often their work appears functional and at the same time opens a new experience on familiar places. For example, in Ulm, Germany they worked with public restrooms built into a staircase in the historic city wall, that were closed for about 20 years. The space had acquired a reputation as “the garbage hole”, since it accumulated litter that was thrown down from above. Sibum and Vionnet changed directions of this dynamic. With simple means, they installed a beautifully lighted fountain that climbed up from below. The temporary sculptural intervention opened a new perspective on the site. The work triggered a surprising dynamic. The former “garbage hole” became a popular meeting place and eventually an art bar.
For the ‘Garage’ project we found public spaces in Missoula that have an invisible history or hidden potential. We invited Vionnet and Sibum to design a specific intervention for one of those places. Based on their ideas we will create the artwork together with everybody who likes to join in Missoula at the ‘Garage’. The community-created artwork will then be installed and exhibited in public space for a limited time this summer.