B1|A40 THE BEAUTY OF THE GRAND ROAD

Polytopos Dortmund* ist Skulptur als Architektur,
Display und funktionsloser Baukörper,
Widmung und Umwidmung einer Situation,
die Raum zu Diskurs und Betrachtung direkt
am Schauplatz des Geschehens ermöglicht.
Mit diesem temporären Ensemble verweist
der Künstler auf all die Phänomene und Dinge,
die man normalerweise nie sieht: die Verfasstheit
einer über Jahre veränderten und
entwickelten spezifisch gestalteten Landschaft,
wie es sie nur im Ruhrgebiet zu geben
scheint.
SABINE MARIA SCHMIDT
1| Eine Übersicht findet sich auf der Homepage
des Künstlers [05.08.2015].
2| „Das architektonische Zitat sagt mehr über den
Zitierenden aus als über das Zitierte. Welche Referenzen
werden zu Rate gezogen und welches Weltbild
offenbart sich? Oft spielt Sehnsucht eine große
Rolle; Zukunft als Wunschvergangenheit. Über das
Kontextualisieren entstehen neue Verbindungen und
Zusammenhänge, die in ihrer Bedeutung etwas Eigenes
schaffen. Das Zitat kann sich aber auch auf einen
archetypischen Kanon beziehen, so wie Aldo Rossi immer
wieder Typologien bemühte. Jedoch ist die Grenze
sehr schmal zwischen den Kategorien des Narrativen
beziehungsweise Symbolischen zum Dekorativen einer
kapitalistischen Konsumatmosphäre.“ Christian
Odzuck, zit. aus: Ausst. Kat. Podróbka - Die Avantgarde
gibt nicht auf, Städtische Galerie Danzig 2014, S. 84. Für
die Gruppenausstellung konzipierte Odzuck die raumgreifende
Skulptur Die indische Sonne, die zugleich als
Möbel und Display diente und sich auf die Lichtdramaturgie
der Fassade des High Court Buildings von Le
Corbusier in Chandigarh bezog.
3| Das Fassadenmodul wurde 1960 basierend auf
einem Geschmacksmuster von Egon Eiermann für
die Firma Horten weiterentwickelt und zu einer historischen
Design-Ikone. Für die Düsseldorfer Fassade
(Kaufhof, Berliner Allee) war allerdings Helmut
Hentrich, Begründer von HPP Architekten, zuständig,
der ebenfalls ein wabenähnliches Fassadenelement
entwickelte. Im Gegensatz zu Egon Eiermann ließ
sich HPP den Entwurf nicht patentieren, weshalb es
oftmals zu Verwechslungen über die Urheberschaft
kommt.
4|
[05.08.2015].
5| Die „Schwimmbadplatte“ wurde aus neuem Material
nachgebaut, da Originalmaterialien aus dem aus
Kostengründen geschlossenen städtischen Berliner
Bad in Mönchengladbach nicht verwendet werden
konnten. Diese dienten aber als Vorlage für die Form.
POLYTOPOS DORTMUND* Christian Odzuck
loves books. Not so much as a medium for text
and literature as for an archival compendium,
a sketchbook that documents the beginning of
a work in all of its facets, from his analyses,
sketches, and ideas, to research and completion.
Frequently, these become artist’s books,
whose minimal design speaks for themselves,
without further commentary. Their often-expansive
physical and material qualities allow
them to be read as sculptural objects or conceptual,
architectural projects. 1 For Odzuck,
the book is, above all, a utopian place that
helps one to visualize free ideas, regardless of
whether they can be realized or not. Do sculptures
or crazy architectural designs have to be
realized, or is it enough to manifest them in images?
From what point on are models necessary?
And isn’t sculpture itself a model that is
primarily intended to serve as an instrument
for the continual perception of our urban and
architectural environment?
In recent years Christian Odzuck has realized
many projects and concepts devoted to architectonic
space and its object-like qualities.
Here, as he often says, his interest is focused
on architecture as a system of order that always
boasts a historical, political, and ideological
subtext. He prefers the geometrical,
graphic, mathematical, and abstract formal
and linguistic vocabulary used by architecture
in the 1950s and 1960s, along with its multilayered
network of social and political references.
Odzuck doesn’t superficially reckon with
architectural and tourism highlights. Rather,
he approaches his work via detours and chains
of reception, in a confrontation with the sacred
pillars of Modernism. 2 Many interventions
begin when neglect of this period’s architectural
legacy sets in, or when a great deal of
renovation is necessary. Others start when it
is already too late, or when people realize that
once carefully designed elements of functional
architecture need to be rescued – such as the
recent, time-consuming salvage of so-called
Horten tiles from a department store’s façade
in Düsseldorf. 3
Two of Odzuck’s most frequently cited projects
are the sculptures Temporäre Abkühlung (Temporary
chilling, 2013) and Geozentrik (Geocentric,
2014) in Mönchengladbach, 4 which were
made for the three-year project, Ein ahnungsloser
Traum vom Park (An Innocent Dream of a
Park). The first consisted of a plateau of swimming
pool fragments shaped into a lounger 5
with an operational water hydrant; as a temporary
sculpture, it actually offered water so that
people could temporary cool off. Geozentrik is,
formally speaking, a highly complex synthesis
of recycled materials and shapes that cite
the immediate surroundings. An island zone
in the park, set up like a metaphorical pergola,
is made of drainpipes and scrapped air
ducts from a defunct swimming pool. Three
accompanying concrete benches are faithfully
detailed casts of discarded Burger King furniture
from the 1980s. Everything is composed
of pieces found in and around Mönchengladbach.
In turn, the ensemble’s design goes back
to the diagonal, geometric pattern of the neon
ceilings in the neighboring Museum Abteiberg,
designed by the architect Hans Hollein. In a
nutshell: it was a strange place that immediately
became a spontaneous meeting spot, especially
for young people.
Odzuck’s present-day archeology is always
related to a situation or a site; it’s precisely
formulated, aesthetically balanced, and never
favors sides or ideologies. It is marked by ambivalent
knowledge about the threatened decay
of modern architecture, about the ruined and
the rusty, the depletion of resources, as artists
from the 1970s (Robert Smithson, Sol LeWitt,
Gordon Matta-Clark) taught. It feeds on the notion
that even in a new building you can see its
decaying ruin; at the same time it reminds you
of what once stood in the same place or of what
might stand there at some point in the future.
His works, which also always retain aspects
of a kind of crystalline utopia, at first seem to
subsist on what is there, on bricolage and the
concept of recycling, and then they reactivate
the former “utopian potential” of architecture
and spaces by re-fictionalizing spaces that
could be used for creativity and action.
Odzuck does not shy away from architectural
size – even monumental setups in public spaces
– which he undermines with the concept of
“ephemeral monumentalism.” When he decides
to realize them, the artist understands
POLYTOPOS DORTMUND* CHRISTIAN ODZUCK
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