0229 Church for Sale - bplus.xyz adaptive reuse architecture

For the exhibition Church for Sale, the architectural intervention addresses the exhibition's themes with critical reference to the development plan drawn up for the area around the Hamburger Bahnhof. Further, it draws attention to the continuing lack of clarity regarding the future of the ensemble of buildings used by the Museum für Gegenwart which consists of the historic main building and the Rieckhallen. The two-dimensional line arising from the alignment of the adjacent buildings' boundary in the development plan is translated into a three-dimensional wall that divides the historic hall in two along the north-south axis. The wall has been constructed from reusable material commonly used to enclose building sites. This architectural intervention can be understood as a reference to the fact that the sustainable safeguarding of the museum as a public space and a place to experience art, enjoy reflection and polyphonic discussions that is accessible to all cannot be taken for granted. Read more

Church for Sale featured a variety of artists who consider art to be a political activity against ubiquitous violence and aggression, exclusion and the lack of protection of the common goods essential to life. In their works, they explore the vulnerability of human existence in its social and cultural context and examine power structures in the private and public sphere.

The exhibition takes its name from a series of works by Edgar Arceneaux from 2013 which shows billboards from the bankruptcy-threatened city of Detroit advertising the sale of church properties and, thus, the community-forming meeting rooms they provided. The exhibition brings together works of art that explore the tension between toughness and vulnerability in different social contexts. The show includes sculptures, photographs, graphics, wall and video works by Edgar Arceneaux, Siah Armajani, Christoph Büchel, Tom Burr, Claire Fontaine, Jenny Holzer, Alfredo Jaar, Emily Jacir, Carolyn Lazard, Park McArthur, Rodney McMillian, Bruce Nauman, Cady Noland, Ruben Ochoa, Santiago Sierra and Kara Walker.

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