Landmarking the Berlinische Galerie

Berlinische Galerie & Kuehn Malvezzi

MARKIERUNG GLASLAGER (GLASS STORAGE MARKING), 2003/2004

In 2003 we began working on this large letters marking with Kuehn Malvezzi in close collaboration…

The black and yellow field of letters accentuates the entire length of the plaza in front of the museum. It consists of the names of 160 artists who are represented in the Berlinische Galerie by notable works or groups of works, arranged in rows without breaks. Standing in the middle of the field, the visitor has trouble discerning the correct divisions between known and unknown names. Therefore, many peculiar and even humorous alienations and malapropisms arise. Read vertically or diagonally, the field yields meaningless sound poems, a tribute to the Berlinische Galerie’s one-of-a-kind collection of 1920s Berlin Dadaism. Children love to spell their names by hopping across the letters.