Installation view of Mandla Reuter: Wasser. Photography by Mimi Teller, 2017.
In recent years while Mandla Reuter’s work has travelled the globe, its point of origin is a plot of land on a paper street near downtown Los Angeles. Purchased for his exhibition, A Plot, at De Vleeshal in Middelburg, Netherlands in 2010, Reuter has regularly drawn from this empty lot as a fount of figurative and even literal source material. The site serves as a virtual set and studio, of endless dimension unlimited by geography, while sitting vacant in East L.A. with an occupiable area of around 4,000 square feet.
Wasser occurred simultaneously in multiple locations: The MAK Center’s historic properties, Schindler’s Kings Road House and Fitzpatrick-Leland House, and on a containership somewhere in the Atlantic. This choreography of sequence and staging created an almost baroque narrative of construction. The temporary exhibition reflected on the perpetual movement of sited materials and delocalized resources across the world. Entering the Anthropocene, Wasser explored an age where entire continents are no longer geologically shaped by nature but altered exclusively for reasons of trade and politics, until no part of the world remains unaffected by mankind.
The sparse installation at the Schindler House complemented the main work which was moving between Greece and California. Through the course of the exhibition, a raw snow-white marble block was quarried from the island of Thasos and loaded into a shipping container arriving at the Port of Los Angeles towards the end of the exhibition. The cargo ship and contained marble block became an extended but crucial part of the exhibition, in motion throughout the show.
Reuter, who had been in residence at the Fitzpatrick-Leland House during his preparations for Wasser, invited several artists from L.A. and abroad to help him inhabit the house with their works. Amongst these are Kathryn Andrews, Gerry Bibby, Juliette Blightman, Kerstin Cmelka, Niklas Goldbach, Alejandro De La Guerra, Morgan Fisher, Gina Folly, Karl Holmqvist, Margaret Honda, Halina Kliem, Alice Könitz, Klara Liden, Fabian Marti, Jill Mulleady, Shahryar Nashat, Carissa Rodriguez, Nora Schultz, Alvaro Urbano, and Alexander Wolff.
Artists
Mandla reuter
Mandla Reuter was educated at the Staedelschule in Frankfurt and Parsons School of Design in New York. He has exhibited widely in Europe and America in solo and group exhibitions, using installations and architectural interventions to investigate the parameters defining systems and spaces of cultural production.
Recent solo exhibitions include: Francesca Minini, Milan (2017), Neue Alte Brücke, Frankfurt (2016), Croy Nielsen, Art Berlin Contemporary, Berlin (2015); Kunstverein Braunschweig, Haus Salve Hospes, Braunschweig (2015); L40, Berlin (2014). His work is included in Hessische Kulturstiftung / Hesse Cultural Foundation’s collection, as well as Kulturstiftung Dresden / Cultural Foundation Dresden. Reuter was awarded the MAK-Schindler Scholarship, Los Angeles (2010) and GASAG Kunstpreis / GASAG Art Award (2007).
This exhibition was kindly supported by Kunstfonds Bonn and IFA, Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen.