Benjamin Bergmann, tief unten tag hell, 2008, Foto: Haydar Koyupinar.

Benjamin Bergmann, tief unten tag hell, 2008, Foto: Haydar Koyupinar.

Benjamin Bergmann, tief unten tag hell, 2008, Foto: Haydar Koyupinar.

Pinakothek der Moderne
Kunstareal München
Barer Strasse 40
München
+491089-23805-360
Benjamin Bergmann,
tief unten tag hell
March 14, 2008-
February 22, 2009

The space-consuming installations created by Benjamin Bergmann (b. 1968) revolve around fundamental recurrent questions faced by mankind — the preoccupation with values, the significance of one’s actions, the need for fulfillment and meaning, the treatment of time and transitoriness. Bergmann’s most recent work tief unten tag hell (deep down bright day) was created specifically for the large staircase foyer in the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich.

tief unten tag hell presents a mysterious borderline situation: hundreds of baskets, each one filled with clothes, are suspended high up under the ceiling in the museum. The baskets can be let down on long ropes; they are reminiscent of the changing rooms in collieries and make the existence of a hidden world tangible. The potential up-and-down movement of the items of clothing corresponds to the miners’ daily routine that, however, is not rendered visible. Even in the real world important things often remain hidden from the eye. Indirectly, this imagery is also a reflection of the dynamism of life.

Simply from the inner logic of their function alone, a graphic pattern is created by the long ropes on the wall — their austere lines resembling a music score. These seem to trace the past and the future in an abstract manner. In its idiosyncratic, eloquent silence, tief unten tag hell conjures up an anticipation for something different and becomes a metaphor for a perpetual process of searching that is never completed.

The installations Bergmann created from 2001 onwards are in the tradition of built material collages and environments. Architectural shapes (arenas, stadiums and triumphal arches) also find form in his work as do constructions made for film sets. His objects often seem provisional: the fact that the roller-coaster he erected in the former Palast der Republik in Berlin looked as if it would collapse at any time, is exactly the intention of the artist who is suspicious of words such as perpetuity or perfection.

Clear traces of his handling of materials, the almost theatrical use of technical details and a functionality taken ad absurdum enable Bergmann’s sculptures to be seen as tools of a subversive investigation of the world, in which the principal of failure is raised to a category of beauty. The instruments used by this artist reflect life as an energy-laden but secretive teatrum sacrum, in which knowledge and ignorance, mystery and insight are all equally valid.

Benjamin Bergmann, works in wood and was born in Würzburg in 1968, lives and works in Munich. He is known for large, space-encompassing sculptures.

Besides a number of projects in other regions of Germany, he has realized such works as Tunnelfassade (2005) in Munich. The subject of this architectural installation is the alterations to a tunnel entrance. Bergmann transformed the tunnel, originally intended as nothing more than a place of passage for pedestrians and bicyclists, into a site that invites one to pause and thereby becomes physically perceptible. The artist doubled the tunnel’s opening, deliberately utilized light to raise its status into an imposing façade, and thereby freed the tunnel of its purely pragmatic function. Opposites such as light and shadow as well as bright and dark testify to Bergmann’s intensive investigation of Baroque architecture. At the same time, he thereby inserts his altered tunnel passage into the architectural context of the historical buildings of Munich. The unfinished character that the artist injects into his projects points to the fact that architecture is also subject to a constant process of change. Benjamin Bergmann has taken up a position — here just as in his other works — upon the border between reality and artificial space. He often actively includes himself or even the viewer in the installation.

Benjamin Bergmann, tief unten tag hell, 2008, Foto: Haydar Koyupinar.