Reinhard Mucha

Francis Irv, in collaboration with Luhring Augustine, is pleased to present Kassel, a single-work presentation by Reinhard Mucha.

Based in Düsseldorf where he was born and raised, Mucha’s four-decade-long career can be regarded as one of the most significant contributions to post-war German sculpture. Incorporating craftsmanship, archival ephemera and found objects into elaborate “processions”, the work engages in the fraught relationships between the artist, the country, and the institution. Tracing a line from student work to more recent examples, Mucha ceaselessly evolved his interest in the objects of history, paying chief attention to the languages of transportation and architecture. While those industries operate under an unwavering pact with logic, there is no manual to explain the formal dialectics or provenance of the components that consistently appear in Mucha’s work. The fabricated and the found are conceptually neutralized, allowing a multitude of meanings between the chosen objects, materials, and techniques to coexist. In the case of Mucha, form does not equal function.

Kassel, the titular city of the work, has a multivalent history, acting at one time or another as a religious, locomotive, military, and contemporary art hub, notably hosting Documenta every seven years since its inception in 1955. At face value, Kassel might invoke a data module, fit for a ramshackle telecommunications center; or more simply, a point of access, a door split in half on its side. The work is wall-mounted and shrouded in signifiers of display and infrastructure: a grid is formed via six empty felt volumes, linear void spaces reveal internal armatures and reflective glass is detailed with painted border motifs.

As a viewer navigates the path from the street to the third-floor interior of Francis Irv, one contours a stairwell and hallway with a century of renovations and mixed-use spaces. Originally constructed as a harp factory, the building is now adorned by a curved 1980’s front desk, mirrored passages, travel agencies, and a tattoo parlor. The incidental elements that accrue in the experience of viewing the work mimic the process of decontextualization that Mucha employs to the constituent components of the sculpture itself, displacing it from the walls of institutions and heritage galleries it has occupied for decades. This approach challenges more conventional notions of presentation, opening the door to another context in which to consider Mucha’s practice.

Reinhard Mucha (b. 1950, Düsseldorf, DE) lives and works in Düsseldorf. Selected exhibitions include Der Mucha – An Initial Suspicion, K20 and K21, Düsseldorf (2022-2023); Kunstmuseum Basel (2016); ifa – Galerie Friedrichstraße, Berlin (1996); Museum Haus Esters, Krefeld (1990); Kunsthalle Basel (1987); Kunsthalle Bern (1987); Centre Georges Pompidou; Paris (1986); Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart (1985); and Kabinett für aktuelle Kunst, Bremerhaven (1983). He participated in documenta X (1997), documenta IX (1992) and represented Germany at the 44th Venice Biennale (1990).