The Kunstbrücke am Wildenbruch bears a tipping point. Originally serving as a public bathroom, it has now been converted into a public space for art, with the urinals being repurposed as ornamental pieces. The shift in the space’s significance prompts questions about its past and present meaning. In particular, how do the topics, images, and identities, embodied in the artworks here presented get affected by the space’s former function, which aesthetically is still present?
The participating artists are exploring political and social structures, conventions, and power relations as well as geographies, ideologies, and resulting gaps. By producing incongruencies and establishing new relations, they challenge entrenched notions and open up a space that allows for ambivalence, nuances, and humor. Their strategies, being bold, comical or subversive, speak of the brutality and absurdity sometimes apparent in the world’s normative order. Playing with tipping points, they question how we see the world, perceive it, interpret it, and ultimately project it again.
Can we reverse how we see the world? Is it possible to relinquish our interpretive sovereignty and embrace a new perspective? Or do we become trapped in our own biases and experiences as we age? Of Urinals and Ornaments poses these and other open-ended questions, prompting a thoughtful examination of an unstable, shifting ground.
