Venice Art Biennale: the German Pavilion by Maria Eichhorn – Culture

That the German Pavilion still standing, that’s the message. Since the appointment of the artist Maria Eichhorn as a representative of the Federal Republic of Germany, there have been repeated rumors that she is planning its demolition, lasting destruction, a final, final act. Since Hans Haacke smashed the floor plates there in 1993 shortly after the reunification of Germany there is no artistic contribution that does not also articulate the uneasiness about this representative building, which towers up as a massive block in the aesthetics of the Nazi era on the edge of the Biennale grounds in the Giardini.

But also has Maria Eichhorn only broken a bit, so far. There is a huge, meter-wide hole in the floor, plaster has been chipped off the walls. One sees red masonry, cement, concrete bars. And, if the light is right, white letters too. They name what was uncovered: places where it is visible where the National Socialists were at work. Because even if the massive pavilion in 1938 represented the Reich through and through, the architects commissioned by Joseph Goebbels only hastily converted the classicist predecessor of the state of Bavaria from 1909. The roof was raised, rooms combined into halls, doors widened and the parquet replaced with marble tiles. Where delicate columns at the entrance marked the art temple, massive pilasters paneled with light-colored stone towered up.

Maria Eichhorn had the plaster removed over the seams where the old, carefully laid walls meet the visibly hastily and sloppily erected new walls. The foundations of the original rear wall, which were hidden under the stone slabs, were also uncovered. An inventory that does not necessarily appear as if an artist was at work. One thinks more of the work of archaeologists or preservationists. Especially since in the ditch, which suddenly opens up, not only a small reddish clay oven appears, which probably dates from the time of a monastery. But right next to it is a black, smooth shaft, a remnant of the Martin Kippenberger installation “Metro-NET World Connection” from 2003.

clay stones heirs

The restrained interventions in the house, explains the curator Yilmaz Dziewior, but are not the whole work. It’s just the first step, so to speak, of the work, which bears the title “Relocating a Structure” and aims to move the pavilion, its physical translocation. That is why Maria Eichhorn also offers walks to places of resistance in Venice and, in a thick catalogue, she spreads out her meticulous research in archives that document how construction and conversion work was carried out there on behalf of the national government. As an architect, Mies van der Rohe was supposed to design a new building after the war. Documenta founder Arnold Bode, when he heard about it, suggested a – renewed – conversion that would have turned the massive block into a neutral box, but would have been significantly cheaper.

Eichhorn’s plans to move the pavilion for a while now compete with such considerations. From a technical point of view, two methods are obvious: dismantling and storage or transport as a whole, for example on a floating pontoon. The technology is there, an extensive interview with the son of the Romanian engineer Eugeniu Iordăchescu, who in the 1970s, after an earthquake in Bucharest, had not only churches but also entire blocks of flats rolled through the city to their new location. The method is said to have been so perfect that early in the morning the residents didn’t even realize that they were already on their way to their new address.

Maria Eichhorn’s work for Venice is powerful in this respect, but not overwhelming. The artist hints at the spectacle’s enormous potential, but initially leaves it unfinished, although Yilmaz Dziewior’s team even figured out what highly specialized cranes to hire today. Theoretically. What remains is a lot of space and the very concrete suggestion to imagine this building without one day. There is an aerial view in the catalogue, which as a simulation already anticipates what that could look like. A sand-colored plateau right on the water, a small, tree-lined utopia. What if this building no longer existed?

Obsessed with Nazi history?

Nobody can tell such visions like the artist, who was born in 1962. She was one of the first to deal with looted art, quite specifically by having the paintings turned over in the Munich Museum Lenbachhaus in 2003 under the title “Restitution Policy” and thus – using inscriptions, markings, stickers – indicating the original ownership structure. She continued her work on the German past with the founding of the Rose Valland Institute at Documenta 14, whose task since then has not only been to track down the original, mostly Jewish, owners of art, but also to clarify who owned vases and silverware and Biedermeier furniture once belonged. Although the complicated research has so far resulted in only a few returns, since then every junk dealer’s shop window has appeared contaminated.

The fact that Maria Eichhorn’s projects are always very tangible and practical in their implementation sets her apart from the conceptual art generation. And what sets her apart from utopia is her precise way of working, which – for example when buying a house for the Documenta in Athens – also includes lawyers, the land registry and realtors.

During the first few days, international visitors in particular criticized the fact that German art did not lift the eye, that the Nazi history was clinging to as if it were a unique selling point. This criticism overlooks the fact that “Relocating a Structure” is intended as a model, a universally valid guide to dealing with all architectures that are designed to last forever. And that is urgently needed in times when governments are becoming regimes again and the bombast of the Stalin era is being bombed just as much as residential buildings, factories, Soviet modernism and brand new shopping centers during the war in Ukraine. What to do with the layers left by history? First think away. “Relocating a Structure” shows how it’s done. And leaves the completion to the audience and politics. Maria Eichhorn just lays out the tools.