Thomas Rentmeister
Born 1964 in Reken / Westphalia, lives and works in Berlin
Hotel linen at Gabrielli, site-specific installation 2014
In his works Thomas Rentmeister combines objects and materials that rarely meet in everyday life: frying pans and column shafts, refrigerators and Penaten baby creme, table cloths and tampons, door frames and napery.
At the invitation of Hotel Gabrielli the sculptor and professor at the art academy of Brunswick has used white napery to seal off completely a passage that, until recently, served as an office counter. Spare sheets from the hotel’s own reserves were stacked into a white surface flush with the wall. A frame set in the wall indicates the former doorway. Rentmeister plugged even the tiniest crevices with sugar cubes, tampons, Q-tips and cotton-wool swabs. The result is a monochrome image corresponding wonderfully with the wooden panel installed underneath.
Shame and intimacy, protection and care are the subjects addressed in this provocatively simple and subtle work. The artist confronts the viewer with unusual materials, which most of all refer to our bodily nature: sheets ensure cleanliness while eating and sleeping; sanitary products are inserted into the various orifices of the human body. Sugar cubes nourish the tongue, while ear buds, tampons and cotton-wool remove and heal excretions, dirt and wounds. The materials are suggestive of bath, bed and dining rooms, places which hotel guests would seek to withdraw and relax.
Florian Slotawa
Born 1972 in Rosenheim / Bavaria, lives and works in Berlin
Hotel Series
Black-and-white photograph
20.5 x 26.7 cm
1999
Florian Slotawa is a German sculptor and conceptual artist. He works with existing situations and materials. In most cases they are existing inventories, which the artist and professor at the art academy in Kassel integrates into his installations, re-sorting and divesting them of their functional context. Thus he questions established orders, turning them on their heads. This is true in particular of the nine black-and-white photographs from his 1999 series Hotel exhibited at Hotel Gabrielli. All these photographs were taken during nights he spent at hotels in several European cities.
Instead of resting Slotawa rather used his guest rooms as temporary workplaces. In the space of 10 hours he shifted every piece of furniture and every object in the room without being noticed, turning them into an artistic installation. Having documented the results with his camera, the artist returned the objects to their previous places. No traces of the action were discernible the following morning. By means of such actions Slotawa challenges habits, orders, rules, norms and purported certainties that shape our everyday lives. He draws attention to the fact that nothing is ever necessarily the way it is.
In cooperation with Haus am Waldsee, international art in Berlin.
