The Sammuel Boros Collection is shrouded in a thinly veiled veneer of secrecy. I say this because, first of all, anybody can go and see it and secondly, the collection - or most of it - is online providing you have the correct password. There are restrictions however, (here we go again) first of all, it's only accessible on the weekend and secondly, only 12 people per group are allowed to be guided around the collection in the allotted time slots. Booking ahead is essential. This all adds to a feeling of exclusivity and an air of mystery that makes for a magnetic effect on the curious and the curiouser. Should I now tell you that this vast collection of contemporary artworks is displayed in an old war bunker - built in 1942 as a bomb shelter, later used as a prison, a storage for tropical fruit (banana bunker) and then a club, famed for its S & M Fetish parties before becoming a storage for the art collection of Christian Boros and family, you'd probably think that I deal in the surreal. However, this old war bunker provides the unlikely setting for a remarkable collection of, currently, 159 works from international artists using sculpture, video and installation.
Christian Boros and his wife Karen Lohman opened their collection to the public in 2008. Boros has been collecting contemporary art since 1990. Over this time, he has put together a private collection with around 500 works by artists such as Damian Hirst, Olafur Eliasson, Elizabeth Peyton, Wolfgang Tillmans, Anselm Reyle, Manfred Pernice, Tobias Rehberger, John Bock, Wilhelm Sasnal and Michel Majerus. The art works are fluid and often change. On my visit I viewed 150 works on a two hour tour. Including pieces from: RIRKRIT TIRAVANIJA, KATJA STRUNZ, MONIKA SOSNOWSKA, SANTIAGO SIERRA, BOJAN SARCEVIC, ANSELM REYLE, HENRIK OLESEN, TOBIAS REHBERGER, SARAH LUCAS, KITTY KRAUS and ELMGREEN & DRAGSET
Most of the works were installed and staged by the artists themselves. There was no curator. This added something, because it meant that the artists became directly involved with the space and that too, became a part of the art work. Sculptures, room and light installations create a new experience in the various rooms of the bunker. This made for a very playful collection that often encouraged the viewer to interact with the artworks on display. This point is never better reflected than in the art work of Monika Sosnowska whose art work, though hard to believe, was not altered to fit the room. This geometric sculpture is huge, jagging in and out of the space like a 3d lightning bolt. The sculpture hid a passageway that allowed the group to walk through it. The entrance was only visible from a certain angle, altering perception, distorting, for a few moments, the reality that was in front of us. The group came out on the other side, amused and slightly disorientated.
The artists sometimes altered or added to their works in order to overcome the sometimes difficult space, and as was communicated by the guide, none of the works I saw, such as Monika Sosnowska's piece, were created specifically for the space. A work by Santiago Sierra from Spain, highlighted this to amusing effect. This was another vast sculpture dressed in a shiny black. It took over the whole room and went through a wall. Four, rectangular shaped structures, side by side, pierced the thick, heavy concrete walls, one by one. Sierra wished to demonstrate the difficulties that were overcome for this piece of art to be installed. The part of the wall that was removed - big lumps of concrete blocks - were placed directly underneath each structure.
It has been suggested that Sierra was pointing out the ridiculous lengths that art collectors will go to in order to have a piece of work. This work certainly verges on the ridiculous and is an inside joke perhaps, poking the finger of fun at the occasionally absurd industry the artist inhabits. At some point, the sculpture will need to be removed, which will be no easy task.
Altering the perception of space was a common theme amongst much of the works on show. It often felt like entering into a crazy house in a fun fair, where each room housed something that was not entirely as it seemed. Many of the artists used light in order to transform the surroundings. Notably Tobias Rehberger from Germany who darned a room full of lamp shades... except they didn't really work as lampshades because they offered no shade. The bulbs were bald and the materials Rehberger used, such as Velcro, were childish and often garish whilst offering a strange beauty. Here, Rehberger explores the fine line between what is art and what is interior design. Kitty Kraus's Lightbox also attempted to transform the small room it was housed in. Splinters of light feathered off from the shiny, box creating an optical illusion of light bending around the room. Whilst certainly beautiful, I was left wondering if this piece worked as art, or whether it walked on the other side - of the interior design shop.
The works on display were often witty, with an underlying subversive, mischievous, sense of humour; which could tell us something about the collectors themselves! One of the works offered up by Elmgreen and Dragset from Denmark featured a dummy of an old man, dead, in a hospital bed. Upon approaching the bed, only the hair and toes of the dummy could be seen and this made me startle for a second until the dummy was totally revealed. Elmgreen and Dragset are known for producing very realistic dummies, most profoundly in their show 'Body in a Swimming Pool', whereby different dummies were placed face down in a swimming pool and made to look like floating corpses. This somewhat macabre, mischievous sense of humour is echoed in the bunker. The dummy, although obviously a fake close up, looked very real to the guests in the hotel who had a full view of it from their room across the road. The dead man was facing outward to the window and apparently this concerned many of the guests staying in the hotel, who frantically reached for their mobile phones to call emergency services. While this work is undoubtedly shocking and sensationalist it plays with the space between real and imaginary worlds. On one hand the initial sense of shock produces an actual emotional response in the brain, which is then calmed once the reality is revealed. Then the brain is free to explore these imaginary worlds without a sense of lurking danger, but with a real emotional response to heighten the reality of it.
Continuing this theme was Polish artist Robert Kusmirowski whose replica of an old, battered bicycle had us all fooled. In 2003 Kusmirowski rode from Paris to Leipzig in period clothes following the exact journey of someone who made that pilgrimage many moons ago. He took pictures of himself and produced a book of his journey with photographs and notes and then placed them next to the original book along with the sculpture of the bicycle. Kusmirowski is often termed 'the genius of fake,' he reconstructs old worlds using modern materials. In this piece of work it was almost impossible to know what was real and what was fake, the bicycle revealed itself upon closer inspection, but the documents and photographs were impossible. The work inevitably provokes thoughts of decay, time, death and loss but I found that I was too distracted to think about the bigger themes whilst trying to discern what objects had been manipulated to look like they belonged to a different time, and which ones really did!
Upon entering and leaving the building, the first and last piece of art work to be seen is by Kris Martin, from Belgium. The work is simply entitled 'For Whom'. The bronze, 3 tonne, church bell which swings from a plinth in the ceiling is quietly poetic. There is no sound as this weighted structure swings back and forth, which leaves an odd sense of displacement. Unlike church bells Martin's bell is not set to swing at definite time slots. It is set to go off at random by a computer. Like Kusmirowski, Martin's bell throws up a sense of tradition and a time lost. There is here, a quiet reverence for the past. And a bigger theme that explores how spirituality and art interact. Kris Martin's bell challenges the viewer to contemplate the past whilst simultaneously asking questions about the present. Who or what has replaced religion in contemporary society? Temples of art perhaps? This was one of the most thought provoking conceptual pieces in the show. Much of the art in the collection is understated in its seriousness and influenced by a conceptual tradition, echoing Bruce Nauman in its best moments and in its worst; playful and nothing else.
Open weekends, Saturday and Sunday and costs 10 Euro per person.
