Tobias Rehberger: Home and Away and Outside

What does a good work of art look like?

Tobias Rehberger (*1966) is undoubtedly one of the most influential and successful German artists of his generation. His most recent major award, the Golden Lion at the 2009 Venice Biennale for the best work of art, underlines this assessment. There, Tobias Rehberger redesigned and refurnished the cafeteria at the invitation of curator Daniel Birnbaum, transforming it into a psychedelic Op Art Gesamtkunstwerk. The book accompanying the exhibition at the Schirn in Frankfurt now shows a larger overview of the artist's work and simulates a sculpture still in the making in the rotunda, the entrance area of the Kunsthalle. What is special about Tobias Rehberger's sculptural work is its strikingly relaxed approach and impact. The artist uses materials that are common and simple in everyday use in order to counteract the artificial and technoid character that his objects initially seem to suggest due to their form and colourfulness. Contrary to expectations, he even heightens this appeal when he opens up his works as objects for normal everyday use, for example at the cafeteria in Venice. The artist's attitude only superficially relates to the question of how something can become art; more important to him seems to be the pendulum swing between the functional demands on an object and the question of what a good work of art should actually look like.

Exhibition:
Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt/Main, 21/2-21/4/2014