ART CITIES:Luxemburg-Christoph Meier
While the situations staged by Christoph Meier are characterized by an abstract, geometrical formal vocabulary, the objects used appear to represent a plot. The emphasis here is on the performative and narrative potential of the media and presentation formats themselves. For Christoph Meier, exhibitions are only a moment, an isolated presentation for the public, a time for discussion, something that comes to a head and then subsides again.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Casino Luxembourg Archive
Christoph Meier’s solo exhibition “CCOOOO” is on presentation at Casino Luxembourg, is the continuation of the exhibitions “C & O” at Kunstverein in Hamburg (24/9-4/11/16), and “C O CO” at Kiosk in Ghent (23/9-19/11/17). In these exhibitions Christoph Meier examines the space as a site of social interaction and interrogates the conditions of contemporary art production and presentation. The audience becomes part of a real, space-filling, architectural structure that challenges the viewer to contemplate the exhibition space as a place of assertion and speculation. Christoph Meier’s basic working method includes site-specificity. His expansive installations always reflect the character and peculiarities of their place of origin, and express a form of theatricality through deliberate posits. These are assertions of space, structure, and architecture that expose and question themselves in the very same moment. Meier’s artworks always focus on social issues, either through the communication of the works with the recipients, collaborations with other artists, or performative moments. His primary material consists of commonly used objects that one is familiar with in real life, while the often abstract forms represent specific actions and narrations. Inspired by the particular architecture and history of the location, Meier presents new architectural and social spaces based on a bamboo grid structure, new and existing sculptures and a video piece. Bamboo sticks ostentatiously take over the space. Sticking to a rigorously fixed modular structure, they uncompromisingly and repetitively penetrate the architecture, regardless of brick or glass. Interior and exterior become interconnected. The grid imposed upon the existing space restricts the visitor’s movements but it also expands the field of vision. It adds a new frame within which we can project an infinite number of imaginary spaces. The sculptures surrounding the bamboo piece are made of found or repurposed materials that carry associations mainly of craft, industry and technology. The container-shapes of folded or perforated metal sheets waver between open and closed, unique and serial, distant and immersive, functional and dysfunctional, minimalist and complex. This game of opposites, repetition, performance and deconstruction keeps the objects in constant motion, refusing univocal interpretations. Meier hopes to see his ‘social forms’ uncouple from what they are to go on a search, together with the visitor, for what they might be. This makes them into a stage, a plinth or table; that is, carriers of meaning open to dialogue.
Info: curator: Kevin Muhlen, Casino Luxembourg – Forum d’art contemporain, 41 Rue Notre Dame, Luxembourg, Duration: 5/5-9/9/18, Days & Hours: Mon, Wed & Fri-Sun 11:00-19:00, Tue 11:00-23:00, www.casino-luxembourg.lu
