Something troubling can be observed in the Arne Jacobsen Foyer: a river flowing through the space just below the ceiling. Priceless cultural assets seem to fall before our eyes into a never-ending stream of transience. They flow unstoppably from the Baroque Galerie into the glass cuboid. We can’t tear our eyes away from this catastrophe: figures and busts, coins and vases, diverse social identities are washed away in this abstract riverine animation.
In his work the conceptual and light artist Mischa Kuball investigates architectural spaces and their social and political contexts. With the magnificent Großer Garten on the one side and a busy road with a tramline on the other, between the Baroque Galerie, and the rebuilt palace, the Arne Jacobsen Foyer is an ideal space for Kuball: a historically charged showcase whose significance the artist examines in his video work lost artefacts, lost presence. Aside from the function of the foyer as a ‘hinge’ between history and the present, between original and copy, Kuball raises the question of the provenience of the passing objects.
Are they perhaps being brought back to their places of origin, or are they lost to all cultures forever? And what is our position? On the edge of this debate, or at its centre?