09.04.1999 - 08.05.1999, Karlsruhe

Volker Möllenhoff

Internal empire

 

The exhibition "Internal Empire" by Volker Möllenhoff at Meyer-Riegger is based on the concept of a universal museum. This figure of thought represents the imagination of a parallel world of ideas in which the total of art exists independently of time and authors. Beyond art and culture of mankind it contains every possible, however nuanced variation, difference, constellation and repetition of all forms of art. Regarding this, the idea of a universal museum differs from many other integral utopias, because it does not totalise something particular, but portrays a utopia of diversity. Here, the universal is understood as an unlimited continuum that is only conceivable as the sum of the different. The architecture of the museum can be imagined as an eternal sequence of rooms, corridors, floors and departments of different character, whose structure and sequence is as diverse as the contained artefacts. From the unbounded passage to secluded series of rooms to isolated chambers uncountable forms are imaginable.
In the exhibition a selected room situation of the universal museum is projected into the gallery space. On the longest wall of the gallery a wall of the museum narrows the passage to the back part of the gallery, since the doorways to both rooms barely approach congruence. At another place, a wall of the gallery blocks the continuation of the museum. Only in one spot do the wall of the gallery and the museum find together. In this space different works will be shown.