Michael Beutler
Portikus, Frankfurt, Germany
A narrow red building with a steep pitched roof stands alone on the small island in Frankfurt’s river Main. A lightweight walkway leads from the Old Bridge to the building, designed by architect Christoph Mäckler in 2004 to house Portikus. The gallery entrance at first appears barricaded by the colourful panels of tissue paper-covered metal grids used in Michael Beutler’s new sculptural installation. The work occupies the entire gallery, expanding from wall to wall, from floor to ceiling, while a narrow passageway leading into the artist’s construction is aligned with the entrance to the gallery, inviting the hesitant viewer to step into the silent colour of Beutler’s whimsical apse. The sculpture’s interior reveals all the secrets of its design: what seemed like flat walls on the exterior are instead massive columns that press firmly against each other, the tissue paper of the panels ripped and torn from the tension created by curving over the metal grids. Every formal element of the sculpture reveals the process used in its creation, interacting organically with the space surrounding it. The interplay between the light filtering in from the glazed roof and the translucence of the paper panels confirms that Beutler’s work doesn’t simply occupy a space but lives and breathes its location.
Beutler and Mäckler make for a good pairing: Beutler’s installation responds to Mäckler’s recent book, Symphony of Stone, in which the architect advocates a return to the ‘art of building’, a re-engagement with the pleasures and possibilities of working material. The rips and tears in Beutler’s panels mimic the same play of light Mäckler creates in the horizontal grooves of Portikus’s combed façade. And yet Beutler’s tissue-paper grids also work against the architect’s characteristic use of brick and stone, creating an atmosphere of ephemeral fragility.
A former student of the Städelschule (which owns Portikus), Beutler has exhibited throughout Germany , France and the UK. That his show is housed in an exhibition hall for which the internationally renowned Olafur Eliasson designed a series of light installations, ‘Light Lab’ (2006), is proof of Portikus’ unique status as a forum where the hierarchy of emerging and established, local and global is levelled. Portikus, like the portico for which it is named and the bridge next to which it is situated, continues to act as an important crossing point of exchange between the insiders and outsiders of the art world
Emily Verla Bovino
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