Things Fall Apart All Over Again

In Things Fall Apart All Over Again, three artists employ strategies of construction, destruction, and transformation to explore the architectural structure of the house. Using everyday materials, Carlos Bunga, Heather Rowe, and Michael Sailstorfer build elaborate site-specific installations. Bunga constructs a huge cardboard house (Artists Space Project, 2005), which he then collapses through strategic cuts. In False Hopes/Silver Clouds (2005) and in Untitled (2005), Rowe creates mock rooms in the interstices of makeshift walls. Sailstorfer's video 3 Ster mit Ausblick (in collaboration with Jürgen Heinert) shows a little wooden house consuming itself.

Curatorial Essay

Things Fall Apart All Over Again brings together three artists who employ strategies of construction, destruction, and transformation in order to question the architectural structure of the house. Each artist uses the house as an immediately recognizable symbol. Although the idea of the house is loaded with associations and opens up discussions about domesticity and gender roles, Carlos Bunga, Heather Rowe, and Michael Sailstorfer deal with it on an abstract and conceptual level. Bunga, for example, treats it as an archetype. Rowe examines a fragment of it—the wall—as a border between public and private. Sailstorfer investigates the relationship between mobility and being rooted at home.

In their installations, Bunga, Rowe, and Sailstorfer use everyday materials. Their work emphasizes process by highlighting the generative aspects of making and destroying. This leaves the interpretive result open ended. Indeed, these artists incorporate such strategies as physical destruction, ironic transformation, and violent psychological gestures. These qualities are reflected in the title of the show. Things Fall Apart stresses the inherent potential in destruction while All Over Again refers to how each piece remains in a state of cyclical transformation.

Bunga, Rowe, and Sailstorfer place equal importance on both the act of building and on the un-building of their individual structures. Nevertheless, their constructions are always subjected to some sort of dismantling or collapse. This approach results in the increased awareness of temporality. Bunga accelerates the life span of his structure, constructing it and then rapidly destroying it; Rowe freezes a singular instant that vacillates between construction and decay; Sailstorfer's open-air sculptures are often temporary, and survive only in photographic or video pieces derived from his ephemeral objects. The conflation of these various moments of time works against a linear reading of each piece. Instead, Bunga, Rowe, and Sailstorfer's installations simultaneously encompass past and future, as well as acts of construction and destruction. Indeed, their work always seems to offer the possibility for continual change.

The artists included in Things Fall Apart All Over Again use inexpensive, low-tech materials, which they craft in a meticulous, personal manner. Bunga assembles new and used cardboard to build a makeshift house. Rowe tinkers with construction materials like sheetrock, and Sailstorfer recycles already existing objects. Such easily recognizable materials offer a literal reading of the work. Yet, at the same time, each artist plays with the implicit connotations of the particular components. In all of their works, they ask the viewer to puzzle together the actual materials with the implied allusions they evoke.

Things Fall Apart All Over Again is not only a thematic show. Rather, we think of it as three monographic exhibitions held within a collective framework. The works included share similarities such as the use of materials, the importance of process, and a comparable understanding of the house. However, it is important to call attention to the differences as these installations encourage discrete experiences. Bunga's cardboard structure suggests moments of abstraction, while Sailstorfer explores the complex relationship between object and its representation, and Rowe integrates both abstract and representational elements. In Things Fall Apart All Over Again, we want to emphasize the spatial conversation among the artists and, at the same time, to maintain the distinctiveness of their practices. We see this show as an introduction to three young artists whose works come together just before they fall apart.

Cecilia Alemani and Simone Subal

Essay on Carlos Bunga

Carlos Bunga's site-specific Artists Space Project (2005) features the remnants of a fragile, life-sized cardboard house, which he built and later destroyed. Bunga spent several days building the cardboard structure. He then painted the outside walls white in order to link the house with the gallery space. However, he coated the interior with different colors, creating a more personal, intimate setting. Afterwards, in a performative gesture, he destroyed his makeshift building through strategic cuts inflicted to the walls' foundation, and crushed the interior walls with the impact of his body. Upon the house's collapse, Bunga removed the demolished wall panels. Only the bare shell of the house, the floor with traces of former interior walls and the previously hidden multi-colored cardboard panels attached to the gallery wall remained.

Bunga placed, next to the fallen form, a light box with a number of slides showing the complex process of the house's construction and destruction. Although the act of construction is hidden from the viewer, the slides allow him or her to recreate the previous stages of the house. The slides give evidence and stress the importance of the different temporal phases.

The physical gesture of slicing is also present in the video Untitled (2002). Bunga's hand incises the edge of a small, cardboard house, and in so doing opens the interior to the viewer. Another video, Untitled (2002) shows a Lilliputian cardboard house, painted white, which is set against a wall, on a floor covered with dirt. Once again, Bunga's hand intervenes and eradicates the house from above. This act leaves traces of the former structure on the wall.

Bunga is interested in the idea of the house as the archetypal symbol of protection and familiarity. According to the artist, the house belongs to our collective consciousness as the signifier of inhabitation. By building this structure, and then un-building it, Bunga underscores the fragility connected with these associations. It is crucial to take notice of the temporal dimension within his work. Bunga fast-forwards the process of decay in his construction, especially, when he juxtaposes the time it takes to build—up to several days—with the act of destruction, which lasts approximately one hour. By speeding up the life cycle of his house and by using perishable material such as cardboard, Bunga emphasizes the fragility and instability of his construction. Moreover, he deliberately pushes this cycle of construction and destruction by trashing his makeshift house by the end of the exhibition: nothing will last. The ephemeral nature of Bunga's work is a metaphor for the impermanence of life .

CARLOS BUNGA b. 1976 in Porto, Portugal. Lives and works in Lisbon, Portugal Education: BFA, Escola Superior de Tecnologia, Gestão (Arte e Design), Caldas da Rainha, Portugal, 2003. Selected Exhibitions: inSite_05, San Diego, CA, 2005; Elba Benítez Gallery, Madrid, Spain, 2005; W139, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 2004; Pilot 1, London, UK, 2004; Manifesta 5, San Sebastian, Spain, 2004; Oh Dear, Zé dos Bois Gallery, Lisbon, Portugal, 2004; EDP Young Artists Award, Serralves Museum, Porto, Portugal, 2003; Jovens Criadores, Porto, Portugal, 2002; Caldas Late Night, Caldas da Rainha, Portugal, 2001.

Essay on Heather Rowe

Heather Rowe probes architectural modules and fragments. In False Hopes/Silver Clouds (2005) and in Untitled (2005), she turns the wall—the border that usually separates the interior from the exterior and gives stability to the building—into a membrane. In the two works presented at Artists Space, she conflates the relationship between inside and outside with mock interior rooms in the interstices of her makeshift walls. Rowe's pieces show what is usually invisible, emphasizing the non-descript nature of the inside of a wall. In the narrow space, created by the preset dimensions of the two-by-four wooden wall frame, she condenses the interior of different rooms. While Untitled describes a more intimate setting, embellished with wallpaper and carefully painted stark white, False Hopes/Silver Clouds refers to a corporate world with fluorescent lights and grey industrial carpets. Each section resembles a slice cut out from a room. These meticulous slivers are contra sted with the messiness of the outer structure—the sheetrock panels—revealing the process of construction.

In her work, Rowe frequently uses common construction materials such as wood two-by-fours, steel frames, inexpensive house paint, and plexiglas. This enables her to explore the familiarity these materials evoke. In addition, she punctuates them with decorative details, such as mirrors or a golden frame. While she includes some of these items without changing their physical properties, there are times when she deliberately alters and converts them. Rowe uses the construction materials and the inserted objects for their particular connotations. By setting these diverging ingredients into a relational structure, she creates an extended narrative.

For example, Rowe adds two plexiglas guillotines to the walls: one is transparent, hovering above like the sword of Damocles, while the other is big and black, obstructing the passage. They challenge the viewer on both the physical and the psychological level. This loaded object can be read as both a violent, destructive threat as well as an aesthetic, geometric form. In contrast with the minimal and industrial structure in which it is inserted, the guillotine highlights the threat that is implicit in our contemporary world.

In fact, Rowe's work often oscillates between different polarities: minimal versus ornamental, or rough surface treatment versus carefully crafted interior section. As soon as one aspect of the piece becomes dominant, she inserts another element to counter this tendency. Materials as well as objects negate each other. The polarity is never resolved; on the contrary, Rowe's works resemble open-ended sketches.

HEATHER ROWE b. 1970 in New Haven, CT. Lives and works in New York City Education: MFA, Columbia University School of the Arts, New York, NY, 2001; BFA Massachusetts College of Art, Boston, MA, 1994. Selected Exhibitions: Good Titles from Bad Books, Kevin Bruk Gallery, Miami, FL, 2005; Summery Summary, Brooklyn, NY, 2004; Six Sculptors, Long Island University, Brooklyn, NY, 2002; International Summer Academy Group Show, Salzburg, Austria, 2001; Columbia University MFA Thesis Exhibition, New York, NY, 2001; Part 01, Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University, New York, NY, 2000; Lay of the Land, Vox Populi, Philadelphia, PA, 1999.

Michael Sailstorfer

Michael Sailstorfer's sculptural interventions are transformative actions. He undoes familiar, common objects and turns them into artworks. Employing diverse strategies of transformation, destruction, and construction, he alters both the function and value of these objects. In Heimatlied (2001), Sailstorfer dismantled four mobile homes, reassembled the parts into a life-sized house, and placed it in the Bavarian countryside. In a slide installation from 2004, also called Heimatlied, Sailstorfer integrates a caravan table from the previous site-specific project. Here, the eight slides offer different views of the assembled house, while the table brings a physical record into the gallery. Sailstorfer cancels the mobility of the mobile homes. By contrasting the apparent meaning of the originals with the restructured new object, he creates an absurd narrative, and plays with the incongruity of what might be expected and what actually occurs.

As in so many of his sculptural transformations, the house takes center stage. The video 3 Ster mit Ausblick (2002) (done in collaboration with Jürgen Heinert) records a wooden country house consuming itself by gradually burning its structural parts in its own stove. A consequence of this implied self-destruction is that the viewer witnesses the house seemingly acting in its own right. This inverts the meaning of the house from a safe haven to a self-destructive place. What is commonly considered the material and spiritual center of the house—the stove—becomes the inner enemy attacking the foundation of its own domesticity.

Sailstorfer's artistic practice is deeply process based. He recycles and recombines things. His sculptures are highly laborious and crafted. Sailstorfer's act of destroying, for example, a mobile home, erases the immediacy of its previous function. He is not merely interested in a simple shift of the everyday object to an aesthetic one, but he wants to understand the original object's intrinsic mechanism. For Sailstorfer, destruction is crucial to any new creation.

Often Sailstorfer's work maneuvers between usefulness and futility. The architectural paradigm 'form follows function' is paralleled with an 'everything goes' aesthetic. With a remarkable do-it-yourself attitude, he pushes the functionality of his transformed objects to such a limit that in the end they become overturned and useless. Sailstorfer's artistic transpositions turn the house into an ironic object. Its traditional function—its utility—is annulled. Instead, he proposes an alternative set of implications as an aesthetic, but non-functional object. For Sailstorfer, the function of an object and its material manifestations exist in a constant flux.

MICHAEL SAILSTORFER b. 1979, Vilsbiburg, Germany. Lives and works in Munich, Germany Education: MFA, Goldsmiths College, University of London, 2004; Akademie der Bildenden Künste Munich, 1999—2003. Selected Exhibitions: We Disagree, Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York, NY, 2005; Biennale of Sydney, Australia, 2004; Manifesta 5, San Sebastian, Spain, 2004; Bewegliche Teile, Kunsthaus Graz, Austria; Museum Tinguely, Basel, Switzerland, 2004; new contemporaries 2004, Curve Gallery, Barbican Centre, London and Liverpool Biennale, UK, 2004; Wir, hier!, lothringer 13/halle, Munich, Germany, 2003; At least begin to make an end, W 139, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 2002; junger westen 2001, Kunsthalle Recklinghausen, Germany, 2001.

Things Fall Apart All Over Again
Kuratoren: Cecilia Alemani, Simone Subal

mit Carlos Bunga, Heather Rowe, Michael Sailstorfer