Andrea Pichl

Gibst Du mir Steine, geb' ich Dir Sand / Gibst Du mir Wasser, rühr' ich den Kalk / Wir bauen eine neue Stadt. // You give me stones, I give you sand / You give me water, I mix the lime / We're building a new city. (Palais Schaumburg, 1981)

Stones, sand, lime - building materials needed for every city, especially a new one. A new city is a promise and always also the vision of a more modern and improved society. Andrea Pichl (*1964, Berlin) has been dealing with architectural designs and modernist urban planning in her work for quite some time. She focuses on the associated promises and hopes but also on the realities of the built visions. In the past years, she has often addressed the architecture and design of public and private space in the GDR and other socialist countries: from the large buildings on Berlin's Alexanderplatz to typical interiors. Her drawings, collages, sculptures, and objects depict façade elements, for example, or specific forms which she extracts from their original contexts. A difference to the original is created through omissions, diminutions, the emphasis on details, and the materiality of the produced artistic work. This difference is what characterizes the quality of Andrea Pichl's practice, which goes far beyond mere reproduction, broadening the perspective precisely in the concentrated view: In addition to a very personal examination of the formal language of the GDR, which is also an attempt to assure oneself of history by means of material testimonies, she is engaged in producing a more comprehensive typology of modernist architecture. It reveals how, despite all ideological differences, urbanistic visions of the 20th century draw from the same formal canon in both East and West. What is surprising, for instance, are the structural similarities between the façades of social housing of the 1960s to 1990s on the outskirts of Paris and the socialist housing units in the Marzahn district of Berlin. But also the modular construction of a 'new city', as it was carried out by the shoe manufacturer Tomas Bata in the 1920s for his workers adjacent to the production plants in the Czech town of Zlin, can be found similarly in other parts of the world. No matter if it's the promise of a better life in social housing, socialist ideals or the wish for economic maximization that give the impetus to plan a 'new city': stones, sand and lime are used everywhere, and only when taking a closer look can the differences in the architectural structures be discerned, in addition to their common features. Andrea Pichl works them out with artistic means and brings them together to form a typology of modernist architecture.

Gefühlssache Revolution, Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, Berlin, 2009, stage design: Andrea Pichl

Andrea Pichl, "This is the End", Zentralbüro 2008, paper, cardboard

Andrea Pichl, ohne Titel, pencil on hand-made paper, 30 x 30 cm, 2009

Andrea Pichl, FLUXUS EAST / Fluxus-Netzwerke in Mittelosteuropa
exhibition design
Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, Contemporary Art Centre,
Vilnius, 2007, Kumu Art Museum Tallinn 2008

Andrea Pichl, "Assortment Type: B", within the exhibition: Bewohnte Orte / Obydlená Místa, Kunstverein Springhornhof, 2008

Curriculum vitae

Solo Exhibitions, Exhibition Architecture / Mise-en scène (Selection)

Group Exhibitions (Selection)

Awards and Scholarships (Selection)

Lectureships