Rirkrit Tiravanija Retrospective: Mocha at Café Deutschland

Artist Tiravanija is known for his humorous and interactive art. His art show at Berlin’s Gropius Bau this time around looks a little less humorous.

Rirkrit Tiravanija, “Untitled 1995 (Bon Voage Monsieur Ackermann)”, in performance with Franz Ackermann, 1995 Photo: Rirkrit Tiravanija; Courtesy of the artist

This large-scale show by Rirkrit Tiravanija in Berlin somehow makes you feel depressed. This may be surprising for a contemporary artist who invites people to play table tennis, print T-shirts, make mochas, and play on bamboo mats in his exhibitions. He always creates social encounters through his fun installations.

Perhaps the French curator and art critic Nicolas Bourriaud would say it is “activating.” In the late 1990s, Tiravanija was one of a group of artists who wanted the audience to be actively involved in art.

Carsten Höller installed a tube slide in the gallery, Christine Hill organized an aerobics course, and Tiravanija recreated her New York apartment one-to-one at the Cologne Art Association, where people celebrated, slept, and got married. Photos from this happy, unsecured time are now on display at the Gropius Bau.

It was all fun and games, but at first glance it wasn’t all that political. But this art, which Bourriaud calls “relational aesthetics,” also reflected the era of social gatherings. The Iron Curtain was falling, freedom of travel was introduced to Europe, and Germany was finally seeing itself as a nation of immigrants. Borders were disappearing in politics, and so was art.

Now, as part of the Berlin Art Week, Tiravanija’s retrospective is being held, the Thai artist is restoring the Turkish Mocha from the 1993 installation “Café Deutschland” at the Gropius Bau, just a few meters from the Bundestag. Rights are being debated again. Limits that were thought to have already been overcome are being set.

The hostile atmosphere of politics also permeates Tiravanija’s humorous and communal art, which is how Jenny Schlenzka, the new director of Gropius Bau, presents her future program. The artist has repeatedly addressed the realities of life and everyday experiences in Germany and among immigrants.

Born in Argentina in 1961, raised in several countries and living between Berlin, New York and Chiang Mai for decades, Tiravanija once shook up the art world with his “food sculptures.” Legend has it that he set up a kitchen in New York’s Gallery 303 in 1992 and served Thai curry for free. He combined institutional critique and happenings through his sensuous sense of taste, bringing the known and the unknown together.

Swabian Pancake Soup with Thai Flavor

The movement of taste speaks to him of the movement of people and cultures. At Berlin’s Gropius Bau, curry now boils in gray pots, its aroma permeating the halls. “I saw old Buddhist statues, bowls, and pottery at the Chicago Art Institute in Chicago. What could be better than taking pots out of museum showcases and cooking in them?” Tiravanija said recently. daily mirror Until the beginning of his cooking show.

And as you know, long before the reparations debates of the late 1980s, he was against the museumification of national cultural assets in Western collecting institutions, albeit humorously. The Gropius Bau retrospective begins with very small letters on a very large wall: “We demand the return of our cultural assets in museums.” “Otherwise we will blow them up.”

The fragrant curry is not to be eaten. But a few meters away, Swabian pancake soup with a Thai twist is now a regular offering. And in the atrium, a wooden stage called the “Demo Station” hosts readings, consultation sessions and DJ sets. And you ask yourself: after Documenta 15, after the aggressive protests that followed on October 7, is it still possible for participatory art to provoke groups to act outwardly with the image of the enemy?

But Tiravanija is so far removed from the clear image that his collective installations can be used for one-sided purposes. “Happiness is not always fun,” he calls his show, a quote from Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s “Fear Eats the Soul.”

A film about an impossible love affair between a 60-year-old German cleaner and a much younger Moroccan guest also flickers on a small screen behind the bar, which Tiravanija recreates in a film scene here.

Now the empty Schultze bottle still stands like an abandoned theater stage, and the real drama, filmed by Fassbinder 50 years ago but still relevant, is about love, hostility, and fear. Internal and external perspectives are mixed. This is a picture of society that we want to see even outside the walls of the museum.

“Happiness is not always pleasant”: Rirkrit Tiravanija, Gropius Bau Berlin, until January 12