‘Untitled’ by Mandla Reuter, a piece of his artwork ‘Parks’, realised as part of the Artist in Residence programme in 2013, stands self-governed, discusses and enlarges the concept of sculptures on various levels. In his works, Reuter thoroughly addresses the question how space and territory can be occupied and defined. In due consideration of the venue of the Austrian Sculpture Park, Reuter constitutes references that stretch further beyond the limits of the park.
The Austrian Sculpture Park is defined as architectural garden exhibition area, in which art, nature and visitors enter a dialogue. Furthermore, it is placed nearby an artificially made adventure-, amusement- and entertainment location. This situation interests Reuter as well as the tension of space and area. Even to be able to be at several different places at once is equally relevant.
His work deals with existing places which refer to each other, are connected and bear a relation to each other. Thus they are renegotiable. Unusual approaches and complex interpretations thus lead to new perceptions and conceptions.
Through positioning the exhibit on top of the front right side of the roof of the Berggarten-Café, he conveys the existing location as well as the artwork itself in a state of uncertainty, between fiction and reality. In this way, as he states, he produces not a sculpture, but images that tell stories, always new and different. At the same time he combines the park with specific actions to keep the bodies, the world and ideas connected.
The use of white Carrara marble refers to classical sculpture and its possibilities of narratives, far beyond the actual art work. The tree trunk, corresponding with the concrete pillars of the Café, is supposed to be the supporting element, a part of the sculpture and also the pedestal. A game of semantic shifts, variability of presence and absence, idea and determination of places, linkage of architecture, park and sculpture, of lightness and weight, of locality and interconnectedness, of occupation and development of spaces as well as of localisation and deployment is being started.
The untreated block of marble on the roof irritates usual expectations of space and function, but also of the means of sculpture. Since the artist does not provide the sculpture with any individual handwriting, he thus puts us in a state of conversion, which opens up new perspectives.
Thus, Reuter reduces the sculpture to a material and technical minimum as well as he dismisses conditioned concepts of placement, implementation and interpretation. Furthermore, he combines the notion of the park in several facets and intentions in order to create a diversity of meanings, location-interdependence and freedom of association in accordance with mental and formal precision.
