Post-its, rulers, staples and folders: in the new exhibit "Out of Office" in Bietigheim-Bissingen, near Stuttgart, visitors will be surprised to come across familiar objects from their daily workaday life.
Image: VG Bild Kunst, Bonn 2018 Foto: Hubert P. Klotzeck
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'Out of Office': Art at the workplace
Millions of people are trapped in offices every day. Can art be found in an environment that honors efficiency above all? Artists featured in the new exhibition "Out of Office" have explored that possibility.
Image: VG Bild-Kunst/Hubert P. Klotzeck
Taming of the shrub
The rubber tree, weeping fig or spider plant aren't the most demanding flora when it comes to care. A familiar sight in any office, these plants survive everywhere from glass skyscrapers to concrete factories. No matter the environment, they usually go unnoticed. Photographer Saskia Groneberg documents the contrast between wild nature and the rigid world of work in her black-and-white shots.
Image: Saskia Groneberg
Take a spin
When wound up with a crank, the cogwheel device inside Beate Engl's man-sized pedestal, "Burnout Machine," speeds up and rotates the chair on its top. The interactive object is the artist's rendition of the stress spiral of the modern working world driven by machinery.
Matten Vogel deals with the theme of time in his work. The wall calendar above, entitled "Monate, 2016-2017," represents the days he spent working in his studio. But the rectangles, which mark individual days of the year, are not labeled with numbers or months.
Image: VG Bild Kunst, Bonn 2018 /H.P. Klotzeck
Vacation gone wrong
Given the name of the exhibition — "Out of Office" — Lilly Lulay's piece "Sundowner at the Beach" embodies the show perfectly. The object consists of driftwood and a holiday photo that has fallen victim to a shredder. The constant desire of most people to escape the stressful work routine is mercilessly destroyed in this artwork.
Image: Frithjof Kjer
Out of the matrix
Ignacio Uriarte is a professional economist who worked as an employee for large corporations for years, but now sees himself as an "office artist." In his series of 12 doodles, he elevates the everyday office scribblings that emerge during telephone conversations to minimalist art. His works are created with commercial pens used by millions of office workers.
Image: VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2018 Foto: Hubert P. Klotzeck
White-collar alphabet
In this piece, Thomas Neumaier radically reduced a typewriter keyboard to just a few letters, leaving only enough to spell out the word: ORDNUNG, meaning "order" in English. The simplicity of Neumaier's object summarizes the task and goal of the whole administrative apparatus.
Image: VG Bild-Kunst/Hubert P. Klotzeck
Depth with a message
Yellow Post-it notes are part of the basic equipment of every office. Berliner artist Denise Winter cuts rectangles into the multi-layered blocks, which become smaller with each layer, creating the impression of spatial depth. Though depth isn't usually associated with these short office notes...
Image: VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2018/H.P. Klotzeck
Between the lines
Here, Dirk Krecker resorts to a technology that seems to have become obsolete in the digital era, the so-called typewriter drawing. "The old-masterly, technically perfect kind of drawing was not an option for me, but neither was its opposite, the wild, imperfect and spidery version," Krecker explained. His solution to the dilemma was a typewriter with which he produced this work.
Image: VG Bild Kunst, Bonn 2018Foto: Hubert P. Klotzeck
Measuring up
At first glance, this work appears to be a collection of rulers. Under normal circumstances, these objects only make their way into museums as tools, for artists and gallerists. Object artist Tina Haase wanted to change that by turning these office instruments into a colorful artwork.
Image: Eberhard Weible
Folders and files
Standard office supplies, such as staples, files and folders, are the medium of Swiss artist Beat Zoderer. He rescues them from the office and brings them into the world of art, rearranging the objects and questioning the principles of daily office work. At the same time, he challenges the world of art, which has a certain tendency to take itself a bit too seriously.
Image: VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2018 Foto: Hubert P. Klotzeck
Scrunched-up papers
Office workers still print out large amounts of paper that are filed away, only to eventually end up in a trash can. Imitating such acts of waste disposal, artist Florian Lechner used scrunched up paper to create a new work at the opening exhibition.
Image: VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2018, Foto: Hubert P. Klotzeck
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Roughly 18 million people — more than 40 percent of all wage earners — work in German offices, and the trend is on the rise, especially in the IT sector. Most employees make an effort to embellish their workplace in an individual fashion with personal pictures, creative coffee mugs or a huge calendar with extraordinary photographs.
But hardly anybody thinks of the workplace as a source of art. And that's why visitors to the new exhibition in the city gallery of Bietigheim-Bissingen, north of Stuttgart, are quite amazed at how the mundane office supplies they've used for years have been turned into works of art.
The idea of creating office art is not altogether new. Inspired by conceptual art, it actually originated in the 1960s when object artist Peter Roehr experimented with industrially produced materials.
Peter Roehr experimented with office art back in the 1960sImage: picture-allianc/dpa/F. Rumpenhorst
He was particularly fond of all kinds of stickers, labels and tags, wooden rulers and punch cards that he attached to cardboard. In this way, he developed an organizing principle that was intended to illustrate the stereotypes of a mass society.
Today, a growing number of artists have discovered the office as a source of inspiration and material. Among them is Ignacio Uriarte, who worked for as an office employee for many years, where he developed his artistic ideas while making phone calls. In 2003, he quit his job with the intention of devoting all his time to office art.
His 12-part series "Münchener Kritzeleien" ("Munich Scribbles") — produced with a simple ballpoint pen that can be found in millions of offices worldwide — can now be admired in the new exhibition.
Also featured are the kinds of office supplies that have come under the threat of extinction due to digitalization, including paper, staples, folders and files. The objective of the artists represented in the exhibition is to save such objects from oblivion.
Engl used a simple office chair and a crank to create her 'Burnout Machine'Image: VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2018, Foto: Leonie Felle
Administrative machinery as oppressive mechanism
The artworks present the office as a site of order and a symbol of regulation, administration and bureaucracy, and even a symbol of power. Over and over again the artists show that, despite structural reforms, the slow administrative machinery hasn't changed — or has even become worse, an idea well illustrated by Beate Engl's interactive "Burnout Machine."
The exhibition "Out of Office: Büro-Kunst oder das Büro im Museum" ("Out of Office: Office art or the office in the museum") features more than 100 works and installations of concrete and conceptual art by 25 artists. It runs from January 20 to April 8, 2018, in the city gallery of Bietigheim-Bissingen.