Raumskulptur

In 1977, Per Kirkeby had a brick sculpture erected behind the Orangerie for documenta 7, which had to be removed for structural reasons despite its great public acceptance. Two exhibitions later, a spatial sculpture was erected at the far end of the documenta hall as a replacement, subject to comparable principles of form.

Its anonymous clinker brickwork without individual traces of manufacture makes it resemble a technical functional building and contrasts it with the documenta hall's use of materials. In the meandering course of the walls of the sculptural architecture, interior and exterior become intertwined in a spatial concept that can be experienced as an alternation of compactness and transparency, of opening and closing when walking through it.

For the first time, a documenta has renounced its mission to objectively reflect contemporary art events. The Belgian curator Jan Hoet counters the traditional documenta self-image with his intuitive view of the current situation.

The selection of works does without theoretical criteria and thematic contexts of justification. Under the motto "From body to body to bodies", it deals mainly with corporeality and bodily functions, with individual bodily experience and body-related experience of reality. Instead of artificial order, creative chaos is the guiding concept of this emphatically subjective documenta.