gefüge –
höffner, hübner, boss revisited
2012 – 2013

10 color photographs, chromira archival prints,  95 cm x 75 cm, mounted on aludibond, framed, signed and numbered edition of 2/3 + 1 ap

Kindly supported by Karin-Abt-Straubinger Stiftung
Nominated for Berlin Art Prize 2013

Using the trash as an archeological reference of social identities, Jonas Paul Wilisch collected discarded objects and furniture from the streets and moved them into his studio in order to reconstruct and reassemble them to ›possible‹ life-worlds. Thereby, he created interiors that offer near-documentary narratives and enable the spectator to take a different approach to real issues. Who could live or work here? What kind of cultural codes can be readout? The final large-scale photographs play with the spectators preconception and presumption. Further, in their obvious disposition as photographs of a certain domestic interior, the images trigger precariousness about what has really happened. The longer we look at them the more we distrust what we see. Besides, raising questions on the authenticity of photography in general today, the discarded objects in the pictures are silent witnesses of [design]trends in our unswervingly overproducing commodity culture and reveal their planned obsolescence. Additionally the names listed in the title (Höffner, Hübner, Boss) on the one hand refer to the cheapest German furniture mega-stores (e.g. Möbel Höffner, Möbel Hübner, Möbel Boss) and on the other represent civil German names. This symbolizes the entanglement of our lives with economic planning and capitalistic values.