Italian Embassy

1998

The installation consisted of life-sized glowing latex horses hanging before the facade of the Italian Embassy in Berlin in 1998.  The villa was then under reconstruction.  During the day the house was visible in all its imperfect run-down state.  But at night the glowing horses transformed the site into a romantic and unreal stage.  The soft light from the horses was reflected in the warm reds of the facade, encircling the house with a gentle glow.

The installation was intended to provide an appropriate imaginative stage for the Embassy’s “awakening” from dormancy and reconstruction.  The horse, with its still potent mythology dating from antiquity, served as a code of strength and grace and forward movement.  The taut binding ropes naturally led one’s imagination forward to the moment of release.  The lightning, a combination of red, rotating emergency – vehicle flashes, periodic bursts of white light and constant rays, caused objects to appear flat or plastic according to the intensity or angle of reflection.  Radiance from the horses themselves played on classical Western themes of truth and science; however, a confrontation of natural and artificial light lent the historical objects a plastic or ambiguously interpreted impression.

10000000 x 3000000 x 11000000 cm
3937008 x 1181102 x 4330709 in

Exhibition(s)