Erik Göngrich currently he lives and works in Berlin and abroad since 1991. Göngrich is an artist working in the public domain using various methods of collaborations, exhibitions, guided tours, building and cooking sessions.
Erik Göngrich is an Artist who works in the public domain. His work is about creating a place of exchange that could be an exhibition, a guided tour or a pavilion with a functioning kitchen for the neighborhood. The projects are based on a long research time to develop specific works for the place and to find collaborators for the actions. The work is about history, trust, political space, modern architecture, cooking and sculpture. Whatever exhibition, installation, publication or pavilion in public it all starts with the interest in the given situation: “I believe in the found objects as todays contemporary sculptures in public and I think in this highly complex time we live in we need more and more collaborators that are developing the artistic action with us.” If you ask me the basic question: What do you do as an artist? I like to respond: I love to do walks, books, marmalade, silk-screen-prints, pavilions, ceramics, activation drawings, performances, fotos and cakes.”
His artistic approach and working strategies can be traced back from his publications; “What is Really Necessary to Add to Reality?” (1997) where he dwells upon the basic question of the ultimate necessity for an artistic intervention. With “Picnic City”(2001) he is investigating the minimum requirements for realising a public intervention. His publication “Starving for Embarrassing Architecture” (2005) outputs the belief that the solutions for architectural and urban developments lie in the ordinary banal and not in the high class modernism. “Alles andre ist drin!” (2005) comes back to the fact that in found and existing situations and objects everything (history and future) is visible. “The Beginning of the Misunderstanding” (2011) is an archival book that examines the misunderstandings that took hold in the public consciousness alongside the international modern and functional architecture. What are our notions of urbanity today and to what extent do they reflect our urban reality? He takes a sculptural view of the informal qualities of the public sphere and is an active archivist of the transformations of public space – some of which he effected, others of which he discovered.
www.goengrich.de Important exhibitions in the last 10 years:
2014
SUPER-STUDIO, IGA-Berlin-2017, Marzahn/Hellersdorf, Berlin |
2013
MP2013 (Capitale Européenne de la Culture Marseille Provence 2013), Marseille –
PARC (mit Stefan Shankland, Benjamin Foerster-Baldenius und Boris Sieverts) | 2012
11th Havana Biennial, LASA – Laboratorio Artístico de San Agustín, Cuba, BIOCUB | 2012
HAU (Theater Hebbel am Ufer) und raumlabor, Tempelhofer Feld, Berlin,
The World is not fair-Die große Weltausstellung
| 2011
Centre d’art contemporain Georges Pompidou, Cajarc, France, and Kunstverein Tiergarten, Berlin, Ecotone
| 2010
Ruhr.2010 Kulturhauptstadt Europas, Essen, Germany, Non Stop City
| 2009
Chinati Foundation, Marfa, Texas, USA, Not Site-Specific
| 2008
European art projects, Old Mint, Berlin, Germany, Megastructures Reloaded
| 2007
SACATAR-Foundation, Itaparica/Bahia, Brazil, Praca nueva Brasilia
| 2007
TICA (Tirana Institute for Contemporary Art), Tirana, Albania, Houses for(m) Tirana
| 2006
MUSAC (Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León), Spain, Trial Balloons
| 2005
9th Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul, Turkey, Istanbul
| 2004
Le Quartier centre d´art contemporain, Qimper, France, Starving for Embarrassing Architecture