EDGAR LESSIG

47 Objects

, 2021

47 Objects was shown at the exhibition »Chambre d’Ami·xes« at Laurenz Space, Vienna in 2021. It was a re-enactment of the seminal show from 1986, »Chambres d’Amis (Room of Friends)«. Fifty-one local and international artists were invited to re-enact the works of the fifty-one artists who participated in the original exhibition in Ghent, Belgium. Instead of presenting the contributions in fifty-eight private houses, as in the original exhibition, all fifty-one works were installed in one single private flat – a 35 m2 studio in the 6th district of Vienna. A room full of friends! Each artist participating in the re-enactment had been given an artist name from the original 1986 list, based on their work. All artists had the freedom to choose whether and how to re-enact the artwork from the 1986 exhibition, or to use the assigned artist name as a starting point for a new approach. My work 47 Objects functions as a re-enactment of Daniel Buren, who rebuilt one room of one of the private houses in the local art museum. The artist’s book depicts those 47 objects that were not artworks but were present in the private flat at the time of the exhibition. The way they are documented, however, still makes them seem like works of art. The already crumbling boundary between the private and public spheres now dissolves completely and the private flat fully becomes a stage.