Berlin-based media artist Nils Völker hung two hundred and seventy white garbage bags in the columned hall of Austria’s Museum für Angewandte Kunst (MAK) in Vienna for the exhibition “Sagmeister & Walsh: Beauty”, which runs until March 2018. Over 1000 precisely installed fans and 45 circuit boards keep their movement on track, helping to rhythmically inflate and deflate the hanging plastic objects.
Through the combination of an everyday material with precise technology, the mixed media installation fills the whole columned hall from the 19th century with its fluid movement and peculiar sound. Concavely arranged and floating above the spectators heads the form of the artwork seems to pass the skylight like the sun’s rays.
Subdivided into nine columns, the nearly 70 square meters large piece of art follows a site-specific choreography determined by a program. Its moving surface is made from 270 white garbage bags, being inflated and deflated. In this way shapes and the boundaries of the installation itself start to dissolve. While viewing the piece from the front you can only make out the white mass of plastic. Viewing it from the side or rear, however, reveals the massive amount of cables and circuitry needed to make what appears to be such an effortless piece of art function.
