Johannes Vogl

• 24.10.–25.11.2006

In the gallery’s new Project Space we are showing an installation by the young German artist Johannes Vogl. For his first gallery exhibition he has built a machine which shoots gold projectiles at the exhibition space’s walls.

The apparatus consists of a simple wood ladder, upon which Vogl mounted wheels, a tray and a swivel arm. At the end of the swivel arm is a firing mechanism with combustion chamber. Propelled by a propane-gas explosion, the gold projectiles — cast expressly for this work — penetrate the walls of the Project Space.

In his work 1 oz.tr., 2006, Johannes Vogl makes reference to the criminal tactics of certain mine-owners who, in the nineteenth century, shot gold nuggets into mines which were already depleted in order to trick naive “forty-niners” into buying them. But 1 oz.tr. also incorporates a witty, critical approach to the exhibition circuit’s structure. Vogl responds to the excessive importance attached to the white cube not by inflicting a mortal wound, but a minor injury — and in a further twist, by using fine gold, calls it into question once again.