23 March–December 2014
Skulpturenmuseum Glaskasten Marl
Creiler Platz 1, Rathaus
D-45768 Marl, Germany
www.skulpturenmuseum-glaskasten-marl.de
Mischa Kuball’s public intervention Les Fleurs Du Mal (Flowers for Marl) both provokes and quotes Charles Baudelaire, yet at the same time, offers possibilities for identification for the inhabitants of Marl, who will be participating and are invited to bring along flowers: participation and discussion are the project’s two non-material components. The distinctive logo made up of white illuminated letters positioned high above the museum on the upper edge of the Town Hall’s façade becomes a kind of signpost, visible from afar, to the Sculpture Museum and the large vase of flowers on the left adjacent to the stairs is to be understood as an invitation to the townsfolk to bring along the aforementioned flowers for Marl and to put them in this prominently placed receptacle. It is situated immediately next to the stairs to the Register Office in the upper floor of the Town Hall—plenty of reasons then for bringing flowers! The vase and its contents will be tended by employees from the Sculpture Museum.
Mischa Kuball, conceptual artist, has developed a site-specific concept which he calls a ”public preposition,” or in other words, suggestions and ideas for the public and for public space. The installation itself, planned as a temporary artwork, could also become a more permanent fixture; the artist would like to determine the actual duration of the installation in consultation with the people of Marl.
In the form of his project series “public prepositions,” Mischa Kuball repeatedly poses the question of the contemporary definition of public art within an extended context. He always begins with a precise analysis of the site where the interventions are to take place, and this approach includes an engagement with the public which has become an established feature of his artistic position.
Every place has its social and political peculiarities which the artist incorporates into his planning. His works tend to be temporary because they are geared towards the potential of an altered perception of seemingly familiar urban contexts.
Mischa Kuball has realised such concepts in different cities at home and abroad, including the work Intervento in the Caserma Cornoldi in Venice, as well as his Marfa Floater, silver / gold in Marfa, Texas, GhostTram in Katowice, Poland and his current contribution solidarity grid in Christchurch, New Zealand as part of the SCAPE Public Art Christchurch Biennial. A total of over fifteen comparable “public preposition” projects are to be published in book format, which means that the intervention in Marl will rub shoulders with works in an international context.
This project was kindly supported by the Ministry for Families, Children, Youth, Culture and Sports of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, the City of Marl and realised by Elektro Decker, Essen.
Mischa Kuball
Born in 1959 in Düsseldorf, Germany, lives and works in Düsseldorf, Germany
Mischa Kuball has been working since 1984 in public and museum-based spaces. Using light in installations and photography, he explores architectural spaces and their social and political discourses. He reflects a full range of differing facets from cultural social structures all the way to architectural interventions that highlight or recode the overall emblematic character and architectural/historical context. Public and private space coalesce in his political, participatory projects. They enable a form of communication between participants, the artist himself, the artwork and urban space.
Since 2007, Mischa Kuball has been professor for media art at the Academy of Media Arts, Cologne where he founded the -1/MinusEins Experimentallabor (Experimental Laboratory).
For more information: www.mischakuball.com
Press contact: skulpturenmuseum [at] marl.de
