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2004
drawing:installation
mixed media on paper
3.6 x 17 m
Villa Romana, Florence, IT
PLAYGROUND was realized for the final presentation of work created by the Villa Romana fellows (in 2004, this group also included Monika Kapfer, Ralf Brück, and Jörg Wagner) in Florence. Instead of showing a work in the exhibition space at the villa, the studio was converted into an exhibition space as well as an exhibit in its own right. The work is the first and simplest version of the transformation of a real space into an imaginary cage effected by the application of drawings depicting wire mesh fencing to the walls. Three walls of the studio—the fourth wall contains the windows—are covered with large sheets of paper and filled with altogether eight rectangular fence panels, each mounted in its own frame structure, that take up the room up to the upper edges of the windows, including the areas above the two doors. The frame structures are composed of brushstroke pipes. The diagonal wire of the mesh fencing is realized in a variety of techniques. Blue appears as an additional color, in varying density and without recognizable rule. The paper ground remains white throughout. Rather than being executed in one piece on the large sheets of paper, the drawings have been realized on various thin papers and then pasted onto the paper support. The transitions between these smaller sheets remain visible in some places as gaps in the continuum of the fence pattern, but the fence panels in their entirety are continuously and evenly attached to their fictional frames.