—BROTZEITTISCH,
2001 (coffee-break-table)
Mobile sitting unit wood, metal, plastic bowl, solar-fountain,
solar-lamps
Botanischer Garten Munich, Schmuckhof |
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The baroque
structure of the garden is used as a playing field for the mobile
table-bench-combination. The sculpture can be used to sit down
and have a break. The visitor can push it to a suitable place.
In the middle of the metallic green object is a solar fountain
that suddenly starts sprinkling with direct sunlight. At night
small lamps are shining although no public visitors are in the
garden (only the gardeners can have a candle-light-diner). The
mobile sit-unit is a self-sufficient system somewhere between
tea-table, baroque pavilion and robot.
Beate Engl offers a coffee break table - the title of the work
- to the excursionist, like a gigantic piece on an oversized
playing field which can be moved, but also functions as a place
to sit on. At the same time, the sculpture with its reels, the
lamps powered by solar cells and the fountain occasionally ejecting
water evokes the image of a small robot leading a life of its
own. An autonomous system: during the day the well sprinkles,
while at night the lamps are shining. If it moved by itself
and said Hello, how are you you would accept it as a new inhabitant
of the garden. In its current phase of development it still
is a coffee break table, but, who knows, maybe a metamorphosis
will take place, Beate Engl explains. The artist invites visitors
to peacefulness and relaxation, to leisure time on an extraterrestrial
planet and evokes the garden as a paradisiacal site of the good
old times. Images of baroque waterworks and idyllic pavilions
arise. Characteristic of her work her sculptures are supposed
to be entered, touched, played upon and used. Only the participation
of the visitor turns the sculpture into a piece to play with
and the layout of the garden with its ways and patches into
a playing field.
(translated catalogue text by Stephanie Rosenthal, Haus der Kunst Munich)
>Download edition of
gameboard DIY version
PDF, 260 KB |
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