Photos: Christian Vogel

255 x 255 x 85 cm, Märklin bridge elements, mirrors

With the exhibition contribution Bildmaschine 09, Clemens Fürtler continues his series of objects that he has been creating since the 2000s – in which he reacts to the specific exhibition situation. He also contributes to the exhibition series of Bildmaschine(n) 01–08, which have been shown in a wide variety of places and exhibition contexts. He currently is represented in the collection exhibition at the Museum Liaunig with one of the Bildmaschinen, which are not only to be read as images, but as "image-generators". 

For Mediations Biennale, some aspects of the work are taken up in Bildmaschine 09, which lead to the topic and location of the exhibition project "I am another you. You are another me": The "racing standstill" as an unstoppable time-image and the "bridge" as a connecting and overcoming metaphor. In Fürtler's Bildmaschinen this racing standstill refers to time and imaginates contemporary Zeitgeist concepts.

But the actual Bildmaschine 09 idea goes beyond and steps further. It visualises the atmosphere of the city and its spatial potential. The urbanity continuously builds itself and creates space: The vertical not only multiplies to areas but potentiates to spaces, this becomes all too recognisable in Bildmaschine 09. Fürtler's  installation consists of bridge elements and transforms these modular elements into a skyscraper-like building. Here again the horizontal gets extended by the verticality. Mirrors reflect the building structure and multiply its elements into spatial images and endless forms. These visible options open up dimensions and infinite fractions the viewer – the built becomes the unseen. 

Thinking of Istanbul the bridge is an emblematic metaphor, and moreover a real link that stretches over continents and their contexts. It overcomes migrations and transitions, permeability, and motion. Bildmaschine 09 incorporates those, it is a dynamic machina in its own object composition: When Clemens Fürtler invents and builds his Bildmaschine, the inventive holds, in the sense of finding, that which is already "here" – but as well the "new". The artist offers in his work a visual "bridge" that can be read as an image of dynamic repetition and conceptual extensibility, of transforming visual habits and breaking up categories and dimensions.

Marie Gruber, press text for the exhibition: Project Bildmaschine 09: Clemens Fürtler – Mediations Biennale Istanbul, 2023