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Location
Kunsthaus Graz, Foyer
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Klimpel works at the intersection of art and design and produced a range of interior interventions and designs that are now permanent features at the Kunsthaus.
The Cat-Tree for the Arts is the name of the new central sculpture in the foyer. Unlike a traditional sculpture, it also allows exhibitions and displays to be staged in the entrance area: a vertical space inhabited by changing artefacts, works of arts, stories and installations. Gleaming mysteriously, the flexible sculpture mimics the courageous gestures of early Modernism, as well as the fictional and pop-cultural avatars of architecture in science fiction
More projects
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Restoration and redesign of mobile bar elements, desk, counter, multi-coloured lacquered and polished MDF, various materials.
The Fires of Yesterday is a set of mobile furniture used for Kunsthaus events, functions and receptions. What happens when the revolutionary and transformative spirit of the Russian Constructivist painter Nikolai Mikhailovich Suetin encounters a contemporary public space? Can the objects around us - white, with graphic references to Suetin’s work - spark a change in society and our consciousness, as was the Constructivists' belief at the beginning of the last century?
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The shop was redesigned in a sensitive and non-obstructive approach that relates to the open architecture of Kunsthaus, opening up the new space with a view through to the back, while creating a stronger dialogue between the interior spaces and the outside.
A set of clay-coloured display structures for presentation are combined with flat plinths and tall shelving. Integrating some Perspex bookshelves designed by Vito Acconci in 1992 for the Walther König's Documenta IX bookshop and taking material cues from it, the shop architecture blends a minimal range of different materials and colours into a space that negotiates the politics of display in the arts - and retail practice.
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Oliver Klimpel designed a seven-piece series of carpets for Kunsthaus. Each piece imagines a different fictional history and identity for Kunsthaus through a logo (KHG) and a design that revisits different periods and progressive positions in art, from Polynesian-influenced Art Nouveau to early Modernist weaving designs, from formalised geometric lettering to a Counter-Cultural Gonzo mascot, all integrating the acronymic name of Kunsthaus, K.H.G.
