Bunkers of The Feuerle Collection

Bunkers of The Feuerle Collection

Now that I mention The Feuerle Collection in Berlin, I would also like to draw attention to the remarkable aesthetic and intellectual tension evoked there. It is a tension born from an unexpected and striking combination of elements. Sculptures and artworks that seem to engage in a kind of silent conversation—with one another, and with the space itself.

In the first large hall of the bunker stand ancient Khmer sculptures, sensuous in presence. The statues display the characteristic enigmatic Khmer smile: a broad mouth, strangely curved; torsos only summarily shaped; skin that—so to speak—lies bare. Carefully preserved. They radiate a certain freshness and fill the somber concrete space of the former bunker with monumental pride. The exhibition presents Eastern culture as sensitive, sensual, and refined. Even the ceremonial incense, though not listed in the program, fits that image. In the second hall we see Chinese lacquered furniture—traditional, delicate works of craftsmanship—confronted here with several modern pieces of Asian origin, such as the somewhat distorted photographs of a Japanese female photographer.

And all of this unfolds within a space that weighs heavily. Literally, because of the concrete—but also figuratively, because of its historical charge. The building was designed for military purposes and, through a minimalist architectural approach, reduced to its essence: black from floor to ceiling, with bare pillars and walls. Cold.

The old, soft, naked sculptures encounter the hard nakedness of the concrete, which is itself a document—in a city more than any other steeped in twentieth-century history.

The play of juxtaposition, the collision of elements that together cast a new light: that is also what I seek to achieve with my own site. By placing authors and personal works side by side, in the hope that ideas and insights may arise from their confrontation.

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