Wolfgang Ellenrieder

At the invitation of E.ON Energie AG, the work Musterbau was created in 2007 for the plaza of the E.ON headquarters in Munich. It is an exemplary art museum on three levels, the warehouse on the first floor, the skylight hall and the management room upstairs. However, the interior is turned inside out in an unusual way. From the offices and meeting rooms of the surrounding administrative buildings, different views and perspectives of the work are revealed. 

Bärbel Tannert writes about this in the catalog Musterbau: ›It could have been greater but no better construed … Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Bearing in mind this quote from our venerable Privy Councillor, Wolfgang Ellenrieder´s “model building” actually appears to be more of a caricature than a real house. It is a house without solid walls, distorted and difficult to comprehend in its basic architectural structure. Things that a house would normally conceal are visibly brought to the fore. It lets you in and wants you to take a look inside. Its vistas and outlooks, – visualized architecturally and pictorially – create an interplay with the architecture into which it has been placed. In this case the Piazza of our company´s building for which it was especially constructed. This special house makes us curious and takes us on a journey to explore its labyrinthine structures, inviting us to make comparisons with its architectural surroundings. Perhaps questions arise: what is the ground plan´s relationship to the upper floors? And above all: where do real rooms end and where do their painted illusory counterparts begin? What is reality and what is image? This is not a house that invites you in for a cosy stopover; it poses questions forcing you to open up and make room for thought. Questions that touch on our sense of perception. Questions that make us yield up our belief in urban and existentialist safety. In this, artists are like philosophers, as Michael Hauskeller pointed out in “Mögliche Welten” (“Possible Worlds”): They (artists) look through secret windows into a secret world; that is to say they allow themselves a perspective which we choose to avoid in the day to day run of things. They take away the familiarity and make it appear as alien as it really is.” We are thrown into this world – into this very large house – and are caught up (in our existence) in a constant battle with the muchquoted “Fragility of the world” – more homeless than at home. Understanding art, its open ends, its questions and challenges, can perhaps help us a little, not to lose the way in the house that is our world … ‹