2023-05-31
Construction site report, May 2023
Guardrails in the Museum Foyer: A Test Placement with Bettina Pousttchi
When a large truck arrives at the rear entrance of the museum, it usually delivers construction materials. Not so on a sunny morning in mid-May: once the lorry’s loading ramp opened, a significantly large work of art was revealed.
A few weeks ago, artist Bettina Pousttchi unveiled a six-meter-tall, brightly red sculpture from her “Vertical Highways” series at Berlin’s Washingtonplatz. In May she travelled to Wiesbaden for a test placement at the Museum Reinhard Ernst. The artist’s new work of art will be installed in the museum foyer, guiding future visitors to the exhibition rooms. The sculpture will span approximately 7.20 meters in length and reach heights of up to 3.50 meters, making it one of the largest. Pousttchi met museum founder Reinhard Ernst and director Oliver Kornhoff at the building site in order to assess how the sculpture interacts with the surrounding architecture. Further security aspects as well as how the work of art will be anchored to the floor were also discussed, since the sculpture’s unusual material (steel guardrails) comes with its own set of specifications.
The Berlin-based artist has been working with ‘urban furniture’ since 2005. She repurposes street posts, barriers, bicycle racks, and tree guards, transforming these standardized, functional mass-produced items into filigree and dynamic structures. The “Vertical Highways” series consists of upright guardrails, bent, compressed, and interlocked to resemble oversized dancing figures. “The vertical orientation of the guardrails, which are typically used horizontally, alters the spatial perception when viewing the sculptures and gives them an architectural dimension,” explains the artist. Her works have been exhibited in cities such as Paris, London, Chicago, and Washington, as well as in numerous German museums, including the Berlinische Galerie, the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn, and the Arp Museum Bahnhof Rolandseck.
Bettina Pousttchi orders the material she needs for her sculptures online. She emphasizes that she uses the same products applied in road construction, invoking the concept of the “ready-made” popularized by Marcel Duchamp. Once ordered, the guardrails are delivered to a metal workshop, where the artist uses an industrial press to deform them under high pressure. This process relies on extensive experience, observation, and an instinctive approach—the weightless appearance of the sculptures is a testament to their meticulous development process. It is worth noting that the work is only considered complete once it has received its coloured surface.
“With the artistic and spatial transformation, the guardrails no longer define boundaries,” says founding director Oliver Kornhoff. “On the contrary, in art, traffic routing and speed limits are lifted. There couldn’t be a better way to set the tone for a museum visit,” he adds.
Following the meeting with the museum’s founder, the artwork returned to the artist’s studio for some final touches before being permanently installed in the museum.