Lutz Bacher, Michael Beutler, Anne Bourse, Holm von Czettritz, Gina Folly, Dozie Kanu, Nuri Koerfer, Enzo Mari / Malik Agachi, Vaclav Pozarek, Claus Richter, Iris Touliatou, Rosemarie Trockel / Thea Djordjadze / Gerda Scheepers, Nicole Wermers, Joseph Zehrer, Heimo Zobernig
Furnishing a home is not inherently political. People don’t just want to eat off the floor, so they set up a table and pull up some chairs, to give the matter a certain form. As well as bringing some order to the satisfaction of needs like eating or sleeping – for which tables and beds are helpful – there’s also getting dressed, and already they need a wardrobe for their clothes. But furniture isn’t just about managing your life. Furnishing is also self-presentation. If you read or at least buy books, others are supposed to see that too. On a bookshelf you are putting your taste on display. But your character is revealed above all in your coat-stand and curtains. If you don’t have the latter, you either have two left hands or are an exhibitionist. In sum, furnishings explain even more than sex why the private is political. How I have chosen my furniture says a lot about me – as does my choice of all products. I am presenting myself, and my position on the social ladder becomes clear, with all the advantages and disadvantages that entails. If you furnish in poverty, you’ll have fewer bad buys, but you rapidly start treading that fine line of the stopgap solution.
The exhibition Superfurniture does not presume to resolve these problems. Rather, I have tried to find furniture-like objects for a helpless friend. Someone who, deep in his unconscious, refuses to live the way we live. The furniture I have selected for him is supposed to tempt him and balk at the norm, just as his own psyche does. It was clear to me that the furnishings he’d agree to would have to be as sombre and complex as the reality of Germany. They should not beautify anything and the furniture would quietly hum along with Hildegard Knef, I need a change of scenery.
