(24 May 2018) LEADIN:
A major solo installation by the French artist Philippe Parreno is opening in the German capital Berlin.
The exhibition converts the whole ground floor of the Martin Gropius Bau Museum into a sound and light installation - all controlled by a "yeast reactor."
STORYLINE:
The main auditorium of the Martin Gropius Bau Museum in Berlin is one of the largest exhibition halls in the German capital.
And the museum building - designed by the architect Martin Gropius and completed in 1881 - is itself a piece of art.
But, French artist Philippe Parreno has now turned the space into his own, with a large black pool of water, LED panels and sounds.
The exhibition - the first solo exhibition by the artist in Germany - has been planned for two years.
A process that the 54-year old Paris based artists says began with him analysing the space.
"You start by reading the space and the time when the show will take place. And that's how I write my script," he says.
The whole exhibition consists of 17 areas, ranging from rooms with video installations to rooms with smaller drawings.
In the room called "My room is another fish bowl" dozens of inflated fish balloons float freely in the space.
The windows have been covered with a yellow film, creating the sensation of being underwater.
Parreno says that he wants the visitors to be able to move freely through the exhibition without being told what they should focus their attention on.
"It is a floating attention. You attention floats rather than being taken," he says.
Previous, Chinese artist Ai Weiwei and Indian-British artists Anish Kapoor have created major exhibitions in the Martin Gropius Bau space.
Parreno has also incorporated the building itself in the exhibition.
The light flowing in through the windows are controlled by large curtains that go up and down seemingly randomly.
The whole machine, from the window blinds to the LED panels and the sounds, are controlled by a large machine called the "Bioreactor."
Inside of a glass box is containers with yeast and water. The yeast is measured by instruments that are in turn analysed by a computer that controls all the installations.
That means that what seems to happen at random, such as the curtains going up, is actually a reaction to the yeast.
"This is not just not a very good artist. But this is a game changer," says Thomas Oberender, artistic director of Berliner Festspiele, the organisation that runs the museum.
"This is someone that has totally changed the idea of what an exhibition is. We are not just doing an exhibition with him but really a whole new system of exhibiting."
In other rooms pianos stand mute in the middle of the rooms, while some rooms are covered with large flickering LED panels.
But in the end, all the rooms and works are meant to be seen as a whole experience, says Angela Rosenberg, exhibition curator.
"Philippe Parreno sees an exhibition more than just the sum of all its parts. For him it is also about showing synchronisation. That means that everything that is moving in the exhibition changes it, and it will never be exactly the same again with a new configuration," she says.
The exhibition opens to the public on May 25th 2018 and runs until August 5th.
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