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MINIMAL VANDALISM
2012
Installation view





MINIMAL VANDALISM (PLATEAU | GRID)
2012
Concrete, steel, varnish
300 x 240 x 4 cm | 225 x 120 x 5 cm




MINIMAL VANDALISM (RACK)
2012
Steel, varnish
75 x 310 x 75 cm



MINIMAL VANDALISM (LINES)
2012
Concrete, steel, varnish
12 x 225 x 80 cm each


MINIMAL VANDALISM (BOX)
2012
Varnish, wood
150 x 300 x 36 cm


Kay Walkowiak’s sculptures and video works draw back on theoretical concepts and the traditional formal vocabulary of cultural and intellectual history, which he relates both to each other and to real everyday habits. In doing so, he traces their cultural constructions, makes them transparent and questions their rules and power structures.
The setting of his installation Minimal Vandalism is based on the spatial tubular architecture of the Viennese Generali Foundation, which is to be understood as a reference to the modernist concept of the White Cube, which the exhibited artworks to “breathe” against an absolutely neutral background. The viewers are left alone with their thoughts and emotions, promoting the optimal exchange between these two poles of art reception. Here, along the concrete wall in the middle of the room, the artist has constructed a parcours of minimalist sculptures, which are not intended for viewing, as expected, but rather to be appropriated by a skateboarder in the context of a video-documented performance. Starting o from three staked boards at one end of the room he skitters up and down the various sculptures, or deftly springs over them. Kay Walkowiak questions the auratic form of presentation of his minimal sculptures as well as the behavioural code involved in viewing them in the exhibition context. The resulting abrasions, chips and scratches, and the echoing noise are, contrary to the predominant artistic canon, the determining elements for the authenticity and uniqueness of this work.



Text: Christine Haupt-Stummer, MMKK, 2018
Photos: Studio Kay Walkowiak



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