Wunderland exhibition series
July 2009 - February 2010
Construction has begun. On the central block of Skulpturenpark Berlin_Zentrum's vacant lots, the foundations of a new apartment building have taken root. Floor by floor, the building emerges out of the ground and into the skyline. The building's architectural style pays homage to past conceptions of the future. Its neighbor, a planned Italian enclave represented with a “Dolce Vita” model-house, comes straight out of an imagined re-creation of the past. Built one-year ago, the model-house has acquired an aged patina and no longer sticks out like a new shoe. In the front garden, oleander plants blend in harmoniously, joining in peace with the wild flowers and grass on the surrounding vacant lots. Due to a temperate Spring, the area is rich with flora and fauna.
To enrich these unimaginative architectures with a more inspired impulse, Skulpturenpark Berlin_Zentrum will complement the building activities with its new series Wunderland (Wonderland). Following the series, Bestandsaufnahme, Parcella, Spekulationen and Landreform, seven visions of spatial development will materialize on the northern block of Skulpturenpark, successively adding to a small settlement or enclave.
Wunderland melds two supposedly antithetical paradigms: the diligent positivism of the legendary, post-War, West German Wirtschaftswunderland, with the fantastic reality of Alice, in whose “Wonderland” rational principles are not the norm. A spectacular and arbitrary growth prevails where all creatures are defined by the credo, “Be what you would seem to be”. The projects of Wunderland are situated in a jungle of paradoxes, lies and deception, utopias, dystopias, ideological and practical politics, enclaves and exclaves, and between an optimistic and cynical vision of tomorrow.
Curatorial Committee
Matteo Pasquinelli (Amsterdam/London)
Tim Voss/Britta Peters (Kunstverein Harburger Bahnhof, Hamburg)
Pelin Tan (Istanbul)
and KUNSTrePUBLIK e.V.
The Wunderland exhibition series is supported by the European Cultural Foundation.