REINHARD MUCHA
ELLER BAHNHOF
NOVEMBER 14 – JANUARY 9, 1999


Luhring Augustine is pleased to announce the exhibition Eller Bahnhof by German artist Reinhard Mucha from November 14 through January 9, 1999. This will be the artist’s first solo show in New York since debuting at the gallery’s SoHo space in 1993 with the historical Collected-Recollected exhibition.

For Eller Bahnhof Mucha will recreate the installation »Stockholmer Raum« which he presented at the inaugural show for the new building of the Moderna Museet, Stockholm, created by Spanish architect Rafael Moneo. This group show, titled Wounds: Between Democracy and Redemption in Contemporary Art, was organized by David Elliot and Pier Luigi Tazzi in February of this year. On the occasion of this exhibition Mucha created six site specific wall displays by cutting rectangular apertures into three of the museum’s temporary walls, thus revealing the poor quality of the structure. With the use of the resulting six “cut-outs” he assembled a white box for the free-standing sculpture Eller Bahnhof, now a new version of a piece, first made for the group show Standort Düsseldorf in 1983 at the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf. “Krupp,” another version of Mucha’s “stool and base- sculptures” stood adjacent to Eller Bahnhof . These two pieces together create a sculptural diptych in the room. The only permanent wall of the new museum , which was part of the »Stockholmer Raum«, held the sculpture Untitled “Pohlschröder,” Ausstellung der Galerie Schellmann & Klüser, München 1982 from 1993 which contains four more white boxes as relics of that former gallery show in Munich some sixteen years ago.

After the Stockholm show, the six wall displays entitled Der Bau (Auszüge aus dem großen Kalender), stapled with laser copies of a toddler in and around various construction sites were removed. Now refabricated, these relics, a result of six further “cut-outs” of even larger dimensions along with “Krupp”, Eller Bahnhof, Unitled “Pohlschröder”Ausstellung der Galerie Schellmann & Klüser, München 1982 will be installed in a dry wall space built to the proportions and dimensions of the original room in Stockholm. Two more pieces, Norden, 1991 and the wall sculpture Untitled (Wand), Kunst-und Museumsverein Wuppertal, 1978 will be installed on the original gallery walls outside of the »Stockholmer Raum« space.

Reinhard Mucha is one of the most important German artists working today. His installation Wartesaal (Waiting room), 1979 –1982/1997 (1983) was included in Documenta X. Mutterseelenallein,1989, a significant room installation is on permanent display at the Museum for Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt. Another major permanent museum installation is Wasserstandsmeldung (Water level report), 1986, at the Städtische Kunstmuseum in Bonn. His work is in the collections of museums throughout the world including The Museum of Modern Art, New York, The Art Institute of Chicago, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C., the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, the Tate Gallery, London, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, Nationalgalerie im Hamburger Bahnhof Museum für Gegwart-Berlin, Museum Kurhaus Kleve, Germany.

Eller Bahnhof at Luhring Augustine will be shown concurrently with another solo show at Murray Guy Gallery titled “Pearl Paint”. Murray Guy will exhibit two works that references Mucha’s first visit to New York in 1977.