Knut Eckstein
"Uncertain Terrain"
Symbols represent something that they themselves are not. They refer to absent and build systems of signs and form the basis of which is the here and now to a communicable reality. To the world of symbols belong also those characters that are advertised by companies in the form of letters or a combination of text and image element itself. As illuminated emblems these largely determine the nocturnal appearance of our cities.
With his intervention "Uncertain Terrain" opened the Berlin-based artist Knut Eckstein (* 1968), the four-part installation series "More Light", the Goethe-Institut in Ráday utca 58, of 2012 and into 2014 light installations by artists from Hungary and Germany presented on the facade of the building. "Uncertain Terrain" is a work that draws on the world of symbols, specifically of the company logo. But what is produced by companies in most materials and most advanced technology arises when Eckstein from the simplest of materials, from different colored light tubes, so-called cable-lights. With these he drew in his latest work of art by the emblem of the French, the fourth largest oil company in the world. Attached to a previously anchored to the shiny, modern facade fragile bamboo scaffolding, lights significantly on the word TOTAL and at the same time name given to these global companies.
The deliberately provisional execution of the installation, which can at Asian sites resembling bamboo scaffolding on the facade of the Institute, it gives the impression that the building itself is in a rebuilding phase. The process seems to be set in motion, refers to future changes - for total?
For indeed, can the word TOTAL to numerous associations. Total may include everything and so can a holistic exclusion of the question. In any case, this term can be connected to a whole claim. For totally believes everything. Without exception. And without further ado. Just totally. But it is not clear what was the intention pursued this concept, make sure it has a positive or negative whole claim will bear. And what the term means, this word mark? For a company that considers itself to be the eighth largest company in the world What does this brand, this word for a Frenchman, a German or Hungarian?
With these questions touched Knut Eckstein's book "Uncertain Terrain" a fundamental idea of the art historian and cultural historian Aby Warburg, the fact isolated a piece of art and not to be regarded purely aesthetic, but in the context of his time and very special traditions in writing and picture.
With the iconology of the installed on the facade of the Goethe Institute materials and signs, the artist illustrates the importance relation between experience and awareness within various cultural experience moments of local or national needs and globally circulating characters. Displacements and condensations are the ways in which the artists and acts with which he questions the meanings of the surrounding characters in a humorous and clever way. It is thus one of those artists who do not make the medium of light itself the object of contemplation, but to use it as part and meaning for complex issues in relation to the surrounding, ubiquitous symbols, characters, not least social phenomena and processes
Matthias Wagner K, November 2012
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