Mandla Reuter: Wasser

Wasser will occur simultaneously in multiple locations: The MAK Center’s historic properties, Schindler’s Kings Road House and Fitzpatrick-Leland House, and on a containership somewhere in the Atlantic. This choreography of sequence and staging creates an almost baroque narrative of construction. The temporary exhibition reflects on the perpetual movement of sited materials and delocalized resources across the world. Entering the Anthropocene, Wasser explores an age where entire continents are no longer geologically shaped by nature but altered exclusively for reasons of trade and politics, until no part of the world remains unaffected by mankind.

The sparse installation at the Schindler House will complement the main work which will be moving between Greece and California. Through the course of the exhibition, a raw snow-white marble block will be quarried from the island of Thasos and loaded into a shipping container arriving at the Port of Los Angeles towards the end of the exhibition. The cargo ship and contained marble block become an extended but crucial part of the exhibition, in motion throughout the show.

Reuter, who has been in residence at the Fitzpatrick-Leland House during his preparations for Wasser, invited several artists from L.A. and abroad to help him inhabit the house with their works. Amongst these are Kathryn Andrews, Gerry Bibby, Juliette Blightman, Kerstin Cmelka, Niklas Goldbach, Alejandro De La Guerra, Morgan Fisher, Gina Folly, Karl Holmqvist, Margaret Honda, Halina Kliem, Alice Könitz, Klara Liden, Fabian Marti, Jill Mulleady, Shahryar Nashat, Carissa Rodriguez, Nora Schultz, Alvaro Urbano, and Alexander Wolff.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.