(°1968, Münster, Germany)
Stone, wool and architecture. Leaving aside the pedestals and the metal frameworks, these are the three basic elements used by the artist Annette Streyl (born in Münster in 1968, now living and working in Hamburg). One merit of the particular use Annette Streyl makes of wool – in combination with representative architecture – is that it emancipates this material from its connotations with handicrafts and jacquards. Annette Streyl produces machine-knitted scale models of buildings. All the buildings are reduced to a 1:100 scale and are as detailed as if they were done in stone. To take an example: even though it is knitted in wool, her Reichstag Berlin (2000) displays an eye for sculptural vocabulary: scale, relief, sheen, rhythm, patina, volume and mass. This interest is articulated even more clearly in the different ‘aggregate states’ she imposes on her models: sculpturally formal like a real architectural model; amorphously shapeless as if hung on a clothesline; or neatly folded like a garment, for instance in a photograph in the publication ‘guckmalda’.
In Annette Streyl’s work, architecture takes on a certain pliancy and ductility. In her use of materials – irrespective of whether she uses wool or stone – she lends a bodily warmth to institutions that chiefly represent tradition, constancy and power. However, Annette Streyl does not do this with just any building. She usually selects constructions that represent political systems (e.g. her Berlin Reichstag from 2000 and Palast der Republik from 1999) or financial and economic power groups (her AT&T New York and Deutsche Bank Frankfurt, both from 1999), exemplify processes of uniformization and consumption (such as a McDonald’s restaurant from 2000 and an Ikea store from 1999), or are related to the culture industry (such as the model of the Hamburg Galerie der Gegenwart she made in 2000 and her model of the ‘Info-Box für den Potzdamer Platz’ in Berlin from 1999). Streyl’s ‘soft sculptures’ ironize representative strategies and masquerades of power. These knitted scale models become empty ‘casings’, exposing the utter failure of the utopian and progressive ideals of several of these institutions. For instance, in a few months’ time, the Berlin Palast der Republik will be torn down. And then all that will remain is Annette Streyl’s sculpture, or model, as a ‘soft’ reminder of a part of German history.
In other words, the artist makes manifest those latent processes and contents that are undetectable either in the monumentality of the actual building or in its official scale model. Representative architecture acquires an air of vulnerability, naïve innocence and playfulness. Suspended from a clothesline, the architectural form of Ikea Dortmund, for instance, loses even more of its rhetoric. Only the colour, overall shape and logo remain to refer to the universal model. In her sculptures, Streyl alienates these alienating institutions and dissects the logic and the communication of power (architectural and other). An important element in this process is the attention she pays to logos and standardization. In our society, the familiar logo has become a vehicle of trust and an assurance of quality and tradition. By using the Deutsche Bank logo on a woollen oven cloth, the artist connects the tradition of the Deutsche Bank with that of domestic crafts. Her stone-carved replicas of the Galerie der Gegenwart Hamburg and McDonald’s, both reduced to the same scale, can be read as a playful comment on the McDonaldization of the museum world or the museumization of McDonalds. It is ‘Hard Work’ to stop either of these processes. However, Annette Streyl carries on knitting and thus carves out a museum of her own together with exemplary architectural references to yesterday and tomorrow.
Dr Martin von Ringleben,
Nürnberg, October 2004
(translated from German into Dutch
by Sonja Snel)
(translated from Dutch into English
by Gregory Ball)
4
2000
54 x 130 x 86 cm
1999
195 x 60 x 28 cm
1999
24 x 54 x 54 cm