DOCUMENTATION

The exhibition Documentation is not only a return to, or a revival of some of Lang’s previous work, but also presents an archive, or “private collection” of various gallery floor plans and museum spaces that chart the author’s previous exhibitions, or document spaces (some are seen to have a positive influence, others a negative influence), which Lang perceives as essential. On the one hand, the showcasing of this personal archive can be seen as another step towards the disruption of the nature and function of the gallery space – a commercial gallery becomes a platform for the presentation of a “depository” of other, potentially competitive, exhibition spaces. On the other hand, it also presents a subjective architectural solution for the small gallery space, although inhibiting, as the increasingly frustrated visitor attempts to make out what is on the tightly clustered panels. In the end, however, the seemingly unreachable becomes reachable, the invisible, visible. As with his installation the Sleeping City at the Venice Biennale, Dominik Lang, looks again at the relationship of the past to the present, and to our ability to grasp this in all its complexity.