Eden Morfaux: 2009

Exposition Wunderland
Skulturenpark Berlin Zentrum

Opening July, 5, 2009, 3 PM
July to Dezember 2009

Beuthstrasse, Berlin

U2 Spittelmarkt

Wunderland #1

Block

Eden Morfaux and Arnaud Elfort (Survival Group)

The shadow cast of a luxurious one-story model condo, which advertises a life of luxury, is reflected in a black, monolithic Block-construction across the street. The sculpture, Block, by French artists, Eden Morfaux and Arnaud Elfort, discloses the "dark side" that lurks beneath the façade of luxury and private property. It illustrates attempts to protect urban buildings and accentuates architectural requirements for existing in public space.Block spotlights nameless, architectural phenomena, edificial devices that are attached to public objects to discourage people from sitting or leaning on them. Morfaux and Elfort, who refer to the devices as "Anti-Sites", have attached sculpted replicas all around the voluminous Block. Without an entrance, it is impenetrable allowing itself only to be approached and walked around. Block presents itself as a passive aggressive monument, compelled by the dubious reasoning of urban anti-spaces, which makes an (Anti)-Statement for the democratic use of space.

Wunderland Construction has begun. On the central block of Skulpturenpark Berlin_Zentrum's vacant lots, the foundations of a new apartment building have taken root. Floor by floor, the building emerges out of the ground and into the skyline. The building's architectural style pays homage to past conceptions of the future. Its neighbor, a planned Italian enclave represented with a "Dolce Vita" model-house, comes straight out of an imagined re-creation of the past. Built one-year ago, the model-house has acquired an aged patina and no longer sticks out like a new shoe. In the front garden, oleander plants blend in harmoniously, joining in peace with the wild flowers and grass on the surrounding vacant lots. Due to a temperate Spring, the area is rich with flora and fauna.To enrich these unimaginative architectures with a more inspired impulse, Skulpturenpark Berlin_Zentrum will complement the building activities with its new series Wunderland (Wonderland). Following the series, Bestandsaufnahme, Parcella, Spekulationen and Landreform, seven visions of spatial development will materialize on the northern block of Skulpturenpark, successively adding to a small settlement or enclave.Wunderland melds two supposedly antithetical paradigms: the diligent positivism of the legendary, post-War, West German Wirtschaftswunder, with the fantastic reality of Alice, in whose wonderland rational principles are not the norm. A spectacular and arbitrary growth prevails and all creatures are defined by the credo, "Be what you would seem to be". The projects of Wunderland are situated in a jungle of paradoxes, lies and deception, utopias, dystopias, ideological and practical politics, enclaves and exclaves, and between an optimistic and cynical vision of tomorrow.

Curatorial Committee
Matteo Pasquinelli (Amsterdam/London)

Tim Voss/Britta Peters (Kunstverein Harburger Bahnhof, Hamburg)

Pelin Tan (Istanbul)
und KUNSTrePUBLIK e.V.

Skulpturenpark Berlin_Zentrum
Neue Grünstr. 20
10179 Berlin
Fon +49 393166399
http://www.skulpturenpark.org/

Contact
Susanne Schröder, Stefanie Geisler
Tel. 0049 (0)177 88 000 69
press@skulpturenpark.org

Wunderland is supported by:
EUROPEAN CULTURAL FOUNDATION

The Block project is supported by:
http://www.wellmade.fr/