Ernst Caramelle
Untitled
Permanent installation at the Vienna Art Passage
since 18 September 2013
KÖR Kunst im öffentlichen Raum GmbH (Public Art Vienna)
Museumsplatz 1, Stiege 15, A
A – 1070 Vienna
T +43 (0)1 521 89 1257
office [at] koer.or.at
“What I would like to do is make passing my theme. People should experience something while walking along without having to stop.” Ernst Caramelle explained his project for the seventy-meter-long Kunstpassage Karlsplatz, after the work he had submitted was chosen as the winning project by a jury of nine in a two-stage competition in April 2012. Barely one and a half years later, the opening of his work as the core component of the new Karlsplatz passageway, which has been generally redesigned both artistically and architecturally, took place. Up to 200,000 passersby per day will now experience Ernst Caramelle’s stunning installation.
Ernst Caramelle’s painting on the elongated side wall of the pedestrian passage spreads over eight fields, all of which are occupied by simple spatial constellations. Fields with frontal views and fields with perspectivally distorted views alternate. Depending on the direction you walk through the passage, this arrangement conveys the impression of individual parts of the wall swiveling out from the straight surface of the tunnel wall to obstruct the passerby’s progress. Other parts correspond with the usual perspective and yet others exaggerate it. The entire configuration is adjusted to the real circumstances of use and produces the effect of a broken zigzagging wall and, thus, the feeling of spatial extension and rhythmized movement. This feeling of extension and rhythmization is enhanced by the faint reflection of the wall painting in the opposite milk glass wall, in whose additionally inserted mirrors you see individual details popping up for an instant when walking by.
Ernst Caramelle’s installation quite explicitly fulfills the functions that constitute the special character of art in public space: occupying, transforming, and upgrading its area, Caramelle’s work offers a change of perspective to the people operating within the urban machinery of today’s achievement-oriented consumer society and contributes to a long-term social transformation of the respective space.
In the spirit of “Art for Everyone,” selected international artists were invited to submit to a competition to find a new design for the Art Passage between the State Opera and Resselpark. There were nine entries in total: Lee Bul, Korea / Ernst Caramelle, Austria / Barbara Kruger, USA / Sarah Morris, England / Jorge Pardo, Cuba / Gerwald Rockenschaub, Austria / Markus Schinwald, Austria / Sam Taylor-Wood, England / Cerith Wyn Evans, Wales
According to the requirements of the competition, the artworks submitted were to account for the transitory character of the location, be easy to understand, and leave a lasting impression on the 200,000 people frequenting the hub every day.
The catalog about the competition with the title Kunstpassage Karlsplatz / Vienna Art Passage including a “Making of” DVD about the winner project by Ernst Caramelle is available at Verlag für moderne Kunst Nürnberg.
Ernst Caramelle’s installation was realized as a joint project by KÖR Kunst im öffentlichen Raum Wien and WIENER LINIEN.
Ernst Caramelle born in 1952 in Hall in Tirol, lives and works in Frankfurt/Main, Karlsruhe, and New York.
