The artist Rudolf Stingel, who was born in South Tyrol and lives mainly in New York, has designed an installation for the Neue Nationalgalerie that is as simple as it is impressive. A specially made carpet was laid out on the granite floor in the large hall. The pattern of the carpet is based on an old Indian Agra carpet that the artist owns and which became the basis for the temporary work of art.
Rudolf Stingel first translated the ornament of his carpet into a black and white image and then had it digitally enlarged and printed several times on large lengths of carpet. When put together, the result is a monumental artistic gesture, an almost infinite pattern in space. The installation is accompanied by a large crystal chandelier, so that various allusions to European cultural and art history ultimately overlap one another.
Agra carpets and other Indian or Persian carpets are still one of the distinctive features of middle-class living today. They were particularly widespread – along with all sorts of other “Orientalia” – in the salon culture of the 19th and early 20th centuries. In opulently furnished rooms, the carpets stood for an upscale lifestyle, for humanistic education, or, as the artist Rudolf Stingel himself emphasizes, “for a well-measured longing for the other.” The early modern artists, such as the Expressionists and the UFA film stars in Berlin, loved the exoticism of the lushly patterned fabrics and rugs.
In the 1920s, the aesthetics of the Bauhaus were directed against such an often very cluttered living culture: the artists of this school based their pictures, sculptures and buildings on elementary structures and demanded clarity and conciseness. Still in keeping with this tradition, the New National Gallery was built in 1968 by the former Bauhaus director Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. With Rudolf Stingel, this triumph of modernity is turned on its head. His installation links the austere building with richly curved ornaments. The Neue Nationalgalerie has often been described as a “modern temple” – Rudolf Stingel turns it into an oriental-influenced “place of worship”. His carpet invites you to sit and lie down, just like in Arabic living culture or even in the mosque - physical postures that are considered more casual and private in Europe.
A lavish crystal chandelier floats above the carpet, ironically reminiscent of pompous places and glamorous appearances. At the same time, he underlines Rudolf Stingel's inescapably European view. Specifically, the chandelier primarily illuminates the carpet ornament, which seems to extend to infinity in the open glass house.