Robert Elfgen - grenzübergang - Berlin

Robert Elfgen
grenzübergang
May 2–June 20, 2009
Berlin

Sprüth Magers Berlin is delighted to be able to present Robert Elfgen’s new installation ‘grenzübergang’ (‘border crossing’). In a continuation of the artist’s interest in imaginary sites and their opening-up, the image of a quiet crossing constitutes the background to Elfgen’s new work. The situation of the passage, together with the narrative framework associated with it, is established through the arrangement of found and produced objects involving highly diverse materials. An illuminated ensemble consisting of a kayak along with picture- and light-objects takes possession of the exhibition space and engenders an intensive but also indefinite spatial feeling. Elfgen thereby creates a place which can be left behind, but which also contains the possibility of being rediscovered.

A semicircle made of panels of cloth encloses the described scene in the exhibition space. In the middle is a kayak which was constructed by Elfgen and whose entrance hatch has a cloth covering. Just as with his pictures and intarsia works, which combine image-conveyer, motif and framing into one object, the surface of the kayak also conveys an insight into the process of its artisanal production. Thus parts of the wooden frame and of the structure remain visible. Shimmering through the surface coating is the honeycombed structure of the supporting material, which takes up the fascination with bees evident in some of Elfgen’s earlier works, and which emphasizes his interest in structures and constructions. The ‘open’ surface contrasts with the decoratively closed-off entrance hatch. The viewer is thereby confronted with an object which, even though it would be capable of functioning in a familiar sense, nonetheless becomes the conveyor of an idea, a suggestion, through its partial non-completion and modification.

The boat is framed by two light-objects which hang near the ground and which, in an earlier installation, symbolized persons from Elfgen’s familial surroundings. Here they function as companions on a journey which, like luminous sources, could offer orientation. The lights assembled out of two perforated hemispheres trace out on the floor a pattern of interconnected circles which recalls Borromean rings, a geometrical figure which is considered to be a symbol for unity through coherence.

Various images and objects complement the installation. Through the utilized colors and forms, they make reference to sacred aspects and create whirring effects which emphasize the indefiniteness of the situation. In its bureaucratic sobriety, the title ‘grenzübergang’ maintains a distance to the works and allows them to retain an innocence and openness which first make it possible for the viewer to appropriate them.

Even though Elfgen’s work allows associations with funeral rituals, such as ship burials from the Viking period, furthermore it points much more toward the immanent symbolic structure of all rituals which bring leave-taking and beginning into connection. In his installations, Elfgen also thematizes biographical elements, but these never lead to a cryptic, private mythology; through the utilized motifs and materials, they instead refer to a subcutaneously present repertoire of symbols. In this sense, it is possible to describe his work and methodology, which layers, exposes and keeps open, as a groping semantics, as a pursuit of traces in the supply of social significance and experience.

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