Alfred Lenz, L201

05.08. - 31.10.2023

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Duration

05.08. - 31.10.2023

Opening

Sat., 5.8.2023, 6 pm

Location

Art in Public Space

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About the
Project

With his L201 project, Alfred Lenz has created an art space in Studenzen on the eponymous Landesstraße 201. Since 2021, various artists and musicians have been coming to this art space to realize their concepts and projects. Various projects were also implemented in 2023.


Alfred Lenz, L201

In 2023, the art space was extended to the opposite side of the street by means of a stair-like sculpture built by Hans Schabus in the form of a grandstand, thereby making an additional setting accessible. A temporary speed limit of 30 km/h opened axes of vision, action and concentration that once again question private and public space and allow them to react to one another.

In 2023 the wall, which was permanently installed in 2022, featured banners designed by artists. Four exhibitions, each with four artists and each lasting three months, took place throughout the year. These were seen by more than four million drivers in one year.

The staircase-like sculpture Von Hier nach Dort (From Here to There) by Hans Schabus was presented as an extension of the L201 art space. It faces the space in a clearly visible position, thus opening it up to its surroundings. It takes on the form of a small grandstand made of  yellow Doka panels and scaffolding tubes. Von Hier nach Dort (From Here to There) invites visitors to take a seat and look into and through the exhibition space. Movement and standstill, two antipodes in dialog, meet.

Peter Piek and Felix Helmut Wagner created a multimedia performance, presented in and around the L201 art space in Studenzen. During their performance, they occupied the street between Hans Schabus grandstand sculpture Von Hier nach Dort (From Here to There) and the outer wall of the art space. In doing so, they entered into a direct dialog with the vehicles and drivers on highway 201, resulting in bizarre, funny and moving moments.

Image Credits

Programme
Biographies

Video

L 201

 

Studenzen, a cadastral community of around 700 inhabitants in the district of Southeast Styria, approximately 30 kilometers east of Graz, is located along Landstrasse 201 (State Road 201), which today carries the majority of commuter and express traffic – around 22,000 cars and trucks every day. Directly on this road at No. 99 stands Alfred Lenz’s home, built in the 1970s to meet the family’s needs. Lenz has been using the outbuilding as an experimental recording studio since 2007 and attached a storage tent to the garage in 2017.

Since 2021, in cooperation with the Institute for Art in Public Space Styria, he has been developing a specific art production field under the title L201, transforming the approximately 28 m2-large entrance and exit area in front of his home – a non-place in the archetypal sense – into an exhibition space. A semi-transparent structure obscures the separation between the private and public realms, crossing the boundaries between architecture, design and art. As a permeable backdrop, a three-wing, adjustable metal grid installation develops an art space and stage that can always be more, stripped of any unambiguity, to open the character of the provisional and changeable as an idea of the possible. Based on his interest in the strategic transformation of non-places, Lenz does not ignore the surroundings, but rather breaks through real and imaginary fences and barriers erected due to increasing exclusion and withdrawal tendencies to establish fields of dialogue instead. With the involvement of all road users, the exhibitions, performances, and concerts enable investigations of the world.

To that effect, L201 was further developed in 2022 and utilized as a venue. The thujas next to the art space were removed and replaced with a metal grid wall eight meters wide and four meters high. This wall thus becomes an advertising space or, better said, an alternative to advertising billboards on highly frequented roads. By displaying banners designed by artists, the potential of countless passing vehicles is used to convey artistic messages without having to meet capitalist demands.

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