Andreas Slominski: Das Ü des Türhüters

So now toilet blocks

Works by Andreas Slominski (*1959 in Meppen), about whom the art magazine Monopol once gleefully judged that he was "truly a seducer", have been on display in countless museums of contemporary art since the early 1990s. For many years, his bicycles packed with belongings were leant against the wall by homeless people in expansive museum halls, and various makes of animal traps, from small for mice to large for wild boars, commanded the respect of visitors. In 1996, Andreas Slominski placed a bicycle inner tube around the pole of an ordinary street lamp for Skulptur.Projekte Münster: "However, he did not do this by throwing the tyre up and wrapping it around the lamp post, as is customary in the well-known children's game. Instead, Slominski had the lamppost dug up by construction workers, placed the hose around the pole from below and had the street lamp replaced." This form of "awkward action" long characterised his artistic practice, in which the practical benefit was disproportionate to the effort involved. Accordingly, the Skulptur.Projekte website states that "the astonishment and amusement at the mischievous awkwardness was the real benefit of the action". Andreas Slominski studied art at the HFBK in Hamburg from 1983 to 1986 and, following a professorship in Karlsruhe, has been Franz Erhard Walther's successor there since 2004. Especially for the Deichtorhallen, he has now developed a room-filling installation with public toilet cubicles - "the human being in the ballot box" (Andreas Slominski) - which symbolise the rebuilding character of our cities. In the exhibition, the artist will present around 100 of these mobile plastic toilets and, in a strange reversal, parts of the cubicles will be displayed on the wall as pictorial objects. The interior elements of such mobile toilets - urinal, toilet seat, paper roll holder or ventilation pipe - will also be arranged on the walls like colourful panel paintings or in the room. Andreas Slominiski has been invited to solo exhibitions by numerous renowned institutions worldwide, including the Kunsthaus Zürich, the Fondazione Prada, Milan, the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam, and the Bonnefanten Museum, Maastricht. In 1997 he took part in the Venice Biennale, and from May the charm of his objects with their Mephistophelean world view will spread in the Deichtorhallen Hamburg.

Exhibition:
Deichtorhallen Hamburg, 14/5 - 21/8/2016