Rénovation

Solo exhibition, FRAC Languedoc-Roussillon, Montpellier, May - June 2000

Installation view. Photo: Jean-Luc Fournier, 2000

Images: Details installation views, Photos: Jean-Luc Fournier / tape and pictogramm: Renovation wall paper, Regina (Maria) Möller

ABOUT

"Renovation which is the title of Regina (Maria) Möller’s exhibition, refers to that area of the home commonly ascribed to the woman and the realm of privacy. The apartment is transferred to the gallery and covered with cardboard removal boxes. Regina (Maria) Möller has gathered them together, open, folded, unfolded and arranged in such a way that they besiege all the available floor space. Humdrum tiding extends to an overall contamination of the space. Exasperation and repetition lead, nonetheless, to the everyday gesture of woman, and the occupation of the premises leads if not to denunciation, then at least to the possibility of removing the woman from her passiveness and resignation, to where she can make her own arrangements, without withdrawal. The artist clearly lays claim to the fact of taking things in hand rather than letting oneself be conditioned. While adopting the signs of merchandise by the use of packaging and logos, she asserts her approach – learn how to live in the world by appropriating your own body and your own ability to change, by moving things, and by coming up with new ways of living within the real that is already in place.

Regina (Maria) Möller is part of the German generation that has been affected by the fall of the Berlin wall. Her work conveys the dread of the slightest confiscation of freedom. She thus extends this dynamic of openness by producing a radical discourse, much more than objects. So the possibility of storage no longer appears to be a brake on free circulation and movement, but a means liable to offer mobility. The dynamic of transport and the transitory makes other developments possible. The resistance of art in the social arena is posited in terms of make-believe imitating the general economy, in order to give more credence to a strategy of existence. The word Renovation, which covers and encompasses all the cardboard boxes, delivers the message in a quite readable way. The (hi)stories are overlaid one on the other, but they do not exclude movement and renewal. As with secondhand clothes, the removal boxes have something strange about them, something to do with an enigmatic experience, just as they presuppose changes in the time and space that underpin life projects.

With the publication of the magazine regina, the artist weaves between the fictitious construction of an identity and her own true identity, between imposed schemes and specific expressions. The subtitle: "Reproduction" referred to the two-fold reference of the figure and the publication as a critical way of taking a stance in relation to the models suggested by society. In the gallery, today, cardboard boxes, wallpaper and wall painting all embrace the image, and the surface crumbles like a mirror. In addition to concepts of identity and representation, Regina (Maria) Möller’s work is concerned, at close quarters, with the methods of operation and production available to the contemporary artist. She is forever shifting what seems to be established, tacking through stereotypes, and sidestepping the different forms of confinement and enclosure to shatter categories and reinstate areas of freedom. .."

Flyer: Rénovation

Text: Céline Mélissent

Translation: Simon Pleasance

WORKS

Rénovation: mural painting
Rénovation: moving boxes (cardboards) from French moving companies with silkscreened texts (French Language) and pictograms
Rénovation: masking tape (French)

CREDITS

FRAC Languedoc-Roussillon, Montpellier

Director: Ami Barak