We are delighted to present a joint booth by Thomas Bayrle and Gerald Domenig based on their first collaboration – a book project from 1978 that was printed but never distributed –  in which the artists enter a dialogue that revolves around the motif of the car.

The car, the ‘autobahn’ and traffic itself  – understood as metaphors for the complex systems and superstructures that control and organize us – have always been central motifs in Bayrle’s work. Domenig shares these interests – starting with the photographs from the 1978 collaboration, but also evident in further series made over the course of the last 30 years.

Resuming their artistic ping-pong, Bayrle and Domenig highlight the theme using different means. Bayrle turns a windshield wiper into a movable aesthetic object, while Domenig deconstructs cars through his photographs and describes streets not as an ornament (as Bayrle does), but via what surrounds them: facades.

Thomas Bayrle’s automatic conductor (kinetic windshield wiper sculpture, Scheibenwischer (Dirigent), 2013) “conducts” – almost inaudibly – Eric Satie’s ‘Furniture Music’, written for flute, clarinet and strings, plus a trumpet. “The Musique d’ameublement [Furniture Music] generates vibrations, without having any other purpose. It suffuses the same role as light, warmth and comfort in all variations”.  Eric Satie, 1920 For an example of the music used for the composition, please follow: http://www.ubu.com/sound/satie_conceptual.html

“My work is about media subtleties, grayzones, osmosis, gobetweenism, guest-media,” says Gerald Domenig of his photographs. By the last term he means the halo of expectations and assumptions that the image brings with it because we know or think we know its agenda: commercial, artistic, journalistic, and so on. But these categories are not exactly stable; Domenig’s images treat everyday commodities—a Nivea tin, a packet of tissues, a loaf of bread—as if they were sculptural objects and at the same time flat simulacra. There are reminders of Albert Renger-Patzsch and Neue Sachlichkeit photography in his Untitled (2011), with its pristine overlapping spoons and blank background.“ Brian Dillon, Frieze Art Fair New York Catalogue, 2013