Selma Gültoprak

Iron sheet garage, wood palettes, iron-barred box, wood, 280 x 350 x 530 cm / Dear Garage exhibition no.4

We typically think of a garage as being in a courtyard, sometimes standing alone, in a row, attached to a house or arranged in a settlement. Garages are autonomously integrated into the landscape of a city and take up a lot of space.
Untitled (economic wonder) serves as a lookout point, it consists of a garage atop a plinth of iron-barred boxes on the Mülheimer Festplatz in Cologne. There is a wide screen formatted window cut out of the back wall that offers a postcard or cinematic like view across the river Rhine to its banks on the other side. By situating the garage in this public site passive use of space within a finite urban area is emphasised.
The ‘Festplatz’ (fairground) is host to occasional fairs, car-boot sales and flea markets. To some extent the garage is another attraction in this programm of public events. It is a fragile shell that presents its bare self, but as a free-standing form within the space of the site, its presence confronts the space and cannot be overlooked.
The garage evokes images of a bunker, a construction site, a cage, a cell, an allotment or of a lookout point. The framed view through the window focuses the eye on the nature outside and across the river, on light and duration. However, at the same time, the garage shields itself from its surroundings and isolates itself from the public space.
DEAR GARAGE was a series of Selma Gültoprak, which took place in four different garages in Cologne, each filled with different installations of the artist. Untitled (economic wonder) was the last of the four garage-exhibitions of DEAR GARAGE.