REGRET: POETIC SCULPTURE

What do I regret? One or the other visitor to the SCHIRN can currently deal with this question, which Tobias Rehberger raises with his sculpture developed specifically for the Rotunda. The artist assembled aluminum elements, neon tubes, and light bulbs to create a kind of three-dimensional mobile. Regret allows making a wide variety of associations. For example, one might think about discarded neon signs from old movie theaters or department stores. Or about the American flag: the light bulbs and the neon tubes arranged in parallel are reminiscent of the stars and stripes; the colors blue and red dominate the voluminous sculpture suspended from the ceiling of the Rotunda and offensively enter a dialogue with the postmodern architecture. The impact of art in space is one of Rehberger's primary interests, as is the question concerning the function of art and the spaces in which it is presented.

The SCHIRN's Rotunda performs several functions at once. It is an entrance portal; during exhibition openings it becomes a social space in which visitors, artists, and curators encounter one another, and it serves as a presentation space for works of art such as that by Rehberger. The sculpture Regret also performs a function, which becomes apparent at the latest when the light is switched on. A spotlight illuminates the sculpture and casts its shadows downwards onto a white platform, forming the word "regret" in upper case letters. The sculpture serves a purpose; in combination with a spotlight it produces this word and becomes a poetry machine. Yet its function is at the same time a pseudo-function, for it exhausts itself in its aesthetic self-reference.

Tobias Rehberger is an adventurer; he is on an expedition in the wide field of art in order to explore its essence. What is the work of art? The shadow? The word? The sculpture? Or everything combined? And how about the authorship? Is the sculpture an art-producing subject? In a conversation Rehberger once said that he is very interested in the phenomenon that things are there for something else. The object is not only interested in its own existence; it is a kind of tool that helps provide something else with an existence. This is apparent in objects of everyday use. A coffee machine, for example, helps coffee exist. But what does art place in the world? These are the types of questions with which Rehberger turns the reception of works of art into an intense examination thereof.

The work is rich in art-historical references. It refers to the genre of Concrete Poetry, with which artists form images with letters and words; it recalls the three-dimensional works by Dadaists and the Russian Constructivists. Regret also brings László Moholy-Nagy's "Light-Space Modulator" to mind. In 1930, the artist created a sculpture in order to experiment with light and motion. Green, red, blue, yellow, and white light bulbs flare up and illuminate geometric forms mounted on a disc that, driven by a mechanism, revolve around their own axis. The resulting color and shadow projections are the actual work. The "Light-Space Modulator" was planned to serve as the focal point of Moholy-Nagy's spatial artwork The Room of Our Time, which was first realized in 2009 within the scope of a large-scale retrospective at the SCHIRN.For Moholy-Nagy, art was an experimental ground. He aspired to the fusion of progressive works with modern life and positioned them between an open experiment, architecture, and design. In doing so, Moholy-Nagy extended the concept of art in the early 20th century, and Rehberger extended it in a very similar way in the 21st century. He will surely never regret it.