Lutz-Rainer Müller and Jan Freuchen Objet Perdu Scroll down for press release Click here for external link to artnet.de review of September 17, 2007 Click on thumbnails below to view larger images Press Release Objet Perdu: 15 September - 10 November, 2007 In 2006 Lutz-Rainer Müller and Jan Freuchen exhibited an almost 1:1 wooden replica of The Eagle, the lunar module that landed on the moon in 1969. The replica also had a copy of a wooden grand piano attached to its body. Originally named Objet Trouvet (found object), the installation went through a deconstruction as Freuchen and Müller chopped it into smaller pieces and placed most of it in a swamp. In a rustic private property outside Berlin is a landscape that might appear as a crash site for a wooden structure. But it could in reality be a construction site for ideas concerning some re-evaluations of the design doctrine of late modernity and its relationship to man and development. In this sense, Basdorf Research Centre was the dumpsite for the sculptures’ remains as well as the artists’ first sculpture park. In July 2007 the broken sculpture was taken out of the swamp – some might say as a fake archaeological excavation of how today was imagined by yesterday. The piece was supremely well preserved by both the swamp and time passed. Then, as a part of the exhibition Hela Havet Storma at PIEROGI Leipzig, a few of the some forty odd parts were spread around in the gallery, drying up. Findings from the Basdorf Research Centre relates to other artists' work in the show. Gluing the show together, not only on a theoretical or conceptual level, but also functioning as a visual binder, connecting the dots.The sculpture (Objet Trouvet) could be regarded as an empty shell for the idea of progress and design in the Modern movement. Because, when the lunar module The Eagle was taken out of its context, appropriated and re-made in a different material (from high tech space craft metal to low tech wood), it became another abstract modernistic sculpture. To the uninformed viewer it would look like a big chunk of wood, screwed, nailed and glued together. The grand piano attached to the sculpture might be seen as an opposition to abstraction. Very recognisable as a clavier-replica, its original function is immediately known. This only makes its displacement stranger. When the rest of the sculpture was transferred to a sculpture park, it [the grand piano] became an installation on a balcony in a private apartment as a part of the "Friends and Enemies" exhibition at Gagosian Gallery in Berlin. In their attempt to re-create and re-build their initial project (which has been decaying – and at the same time preserved – in a swamp, with parts of the original wooden sculpture missing, with numbers indicating dig-sites throughout, cataloguing the found parts), the artists deal with modernism's own relationship to the crisis of representation. According to Fredric Jameson this crisis is covered up by “heroic formal invention and the grandiose prophetic vision of the modernist seers” – in other words blowing up images of representation out of their proportions, hoping that this will disguise the cracks – it doesn’t. Müller & Freuchen’s OBJET PERDU (Lost object), will consist of all the found parts of the original object, arranged within the gallery space. It will also include other sets of reference and source material from the project and its initial context. The artist’s method of working is process orientated. (Even though this text is written way too late, and way too close to the opening) it is unclear how the show will look the in the end. And so the examination of symbols of late modernism and its crisis continues. Jan Freuchen (*1979) studied at the Academy of Fine arts, Bergen as well as on the Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste, Frankfurt am Main. He has exhibited at Kunstwerke, Berlin, Kunsthalle Kiel as well as Christiansands Kunstforening, Kristiansand. Projects this autumn include the 1. Athens Biennale as well as the group show DUMP at the National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo. During the exhibition in Leipzig, his first solo show at Erik Steen Gallery, Oslo is to be seen. He lives in Oslo. Lutz-Rainer Müller (*1977) studied at the Muthesius Kunsthochschule, Kiel, as well as at the Academy of Fine Arts both in Bergen and Oslo. Recent projects involve solo exhibitions at Fotogalleriet, Oslo and at the National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo. He is also part of the group show "Crosstalking" at Christiansands Kunstforening, Kristiansand. He lives in Leipzig.
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