Schaustück Schaustücke

Schaustück, Schaustücke, 2024
site-specific installation, works included:

Einstein, 2024
85.2 x 136.2 x 2.6 cm, Inkjet print, PVC, wood, metal

Grande Surface, 2024
Bucket, floor mop, jug with Eau de Javel

Reflections on Windowpanes in a Cartoon with Ourselves as Evolving Fictions, 2005-2024
ink on windowpanes

Alex in Town, 2008
Video performance, 0’50” (in loop)

Pillars for the Bay of Shanghai, 2008/2024
16 unique pieces, silver-plated steel, 37.6 x 2.5 x 2.5 cm

shown in:
“Schaustück, Schaustücke”, Kunstraum Neuruppin, Neuruppin, Germany

“Schaustück, Schaustücke” (“Showpiece”) at Kunstraum Neuruppin has been specially conceived by me to take place during the winter break and can therefore only be experienced through the shop windows. Instead of simply showing a number of works, I decided to invest the space scenically with individual pieces and to cast the gaze back to the viewer. The viewer, coming from the urban space, the shop windows, the interior with the floor, the opposing walls and the individual showpieces are like lenses or parts of an optical device, which creates a different reality, a new showpiece, with each shift.

About “Einstein”, 2024
This work plays with the tension between the familiar and the artificial, between truth and illusion. The photorealistic, larger-than-life portrait of Albert Einstein looks out at the viewer from the opposite side of the street with a gentle, intelligent gaze through the shop window, a giant of recent human history, an icon that seems so familiar to all of us. But it is precisely this recognition value that is deceptive: what we think we “know” here is a pure illusion, a façade created by an artificial intelligence. “Einstein”, whom everyone thinks they know, is reduced here to a purely virtual, synthetic existence – and thus refers to the illusion and paradox of our modern longing for classification and identification.

Robert Estermann, 2024