Gruben/
Excavation Pits

Year of Origin
2017, continuing

Technic
Installation, Mixed Media, Wood, Asphalt, Photography

An excavation pit, as it is familiar from everyday street life, is taken out of its context, rebuild as an installation at different places and captured through means of photography.

At first glance the product as a photography results irritating. A familiar object is associated with change and in interaction with the unfamiliar environment. The covered excavation pit takes ownership of the environment just with its pure presence and gets into a first conflict with it. The excavation pit, being primarily out of place, creates in interaction with its environment, tension, a first quite trivial irritation.

The places where these excavation pits appear stand in a social cohesion and relate to places of societal relevance.

At second glance however the excavation pit as an image and a tangible symbol draws the attention of the observer and the tension to itself.

Through the consciously created superficiality the excavation pit takes ownership of its environment and begins to interact; as polarity, as a place of action and process. As a “construction site “in sense of an abyss, as something that tries to avoid the gazing eyes on the one hand and on the other hand represents a very positive signal of renewal/refurbishment, a process of development.

Thus these excavation pits don’t generally criticize single institutions/places, they rather provide thought-provoking impulses and remind that exactly these socially relevant institutions/places are constantly evolving, permanently adapting and keeping up with the times.

Works