Your Work Here
Collaboration with Martin Plüddemann
Installation in public space
6 large scale billboards, 60 digital advertising boards
2022
Cologne, 16th – 20th November 2022
Ebertplatz / Cologne Central Station / Bahnhof Deutz
Opening
16th November 2022, 8.00 p.m.
Ebertplatz, Cologne
Finissage
20th November 2022, 3.00 p.m.
Nikolausstr. 69–71, Cologne / backyard
We all know those huge billboards and LED screens that compel our attention. They impose their advertising messages on public space and serve only one purpose: to be noticed and seen.
At this year’s Art Cologne, visitors will encounter billboards that at first glance seem to fit into the advertising logic of the large-format billboards and only subvert it at a second glance: On the posters at Ebertplatz, passers-by can read the succinct message „Hier könnte Ihre Arbeit hängen!“ (german, litterally: „Your work could hang here!“). The clear message is written in the most simple possible style – the ubiquitous Helvetica font, black on white.
From 16.11.2022, just in time for the vernissage of Art Cologne, the billboards can be viewed both at Ebertplatz on six large-format advertising posters and at Cologne Central Station and Bahnhof Deutz as digital text messages on sixty electronic billboards.
By placing their work in the urban setting of the mass media, Fendrich and Plüddemann make the artwork a part of them. Thus, through the media dislocation of art, Fendrich and Plüddemann alienate it from itself or, conversely, turn advertising into a stylistic device for an attitude critical of institutions. In this way, the work can be read as a crack in the fabric of the art market: It is far away, untouchable and in a certain sense intangible.
Supported by the Akademie der Künste with funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media as part of the NEUSTART KULTUR programme.
