Projekt 1 für Erste Campus (Fassaden Wiedner Gürtel)
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- Project 1 for Erste Campus (façades Wiedner Gürtel)
- Projekt 1 für Erste Campus (Fassaden Wiedner Gürtel)
- 2014-2016
- 9 drawings (façades, location plans), pencil and oil on paper, ink and pencil on paper; 14 digital editings, print on paper; digital material (PDFs, animations)
“Project 1 for Erste Campus” was one of the two proposals by Marcus Geiger for the new Erste Group headquarters’ art in architecture project that was inaugurated in 2017. Despite having been commissioned to deliver just one work, the artist produced two site-specific concepts—the second of which was realized while this first one was merely sketched in nine drawings that have since become part of the Kontakt Collection. Before the new headquarters was established, the offices of Erste Group and Erste Bank had been scattered across the inner districts of Vienna in more than 20 buildings. The artist’s idea was therefore to take one façade from each of the former buildings and paint it black, hinting at the real estate that came available on the market as the locations were closed. This amounted to an attempt to create a visual dramaturgy throughout the city that, much like his 1998 project to paint the Vienna Secession red, could hardly be overlooked as he confronted objects’ materiality with a conceptual twist rooted in their actual functions. W.S.