A ship floats in a green sea. The ship is a stadium and looks like an archtictural model. It’s round, it`s terraces, the commen dimensions are modeled on the ideal of the Berliner Olympia Stadium. The scale is 1:100 in relation to the giant proportions. But the object, that lies in front of us, doesn’t consider significant and important details. For example: there are no entrances and exits, ramps, balustrada, roofs or weather shelters, no scoreboard or floodlights. It is not a model, but rather a sculpure. A sculpture that relates to reality of sports, but removes it at the same time. A sculpture that is at once realistic and abstract.
Not only the elimination of specific details support the sculptural quality of the object, but also the geometrical poetry of the empty terraces and the lawn-simulating green velour, with which Julia Neuenhausen has displayed in the top floor of the Hanover Ministry for Science and Culture. This lawn has the effect of a sunken
pedestal in the floor. It creates the stage of the “throw – in” and exhibits itself at the same time. Four picture boards look from the walls at the oval below them. Here also, we recognise once again the plausible balancing act between abstraction and concrete reference. The black and white circles on the yellow ground remind of balls and eyeballs.
As part of an absent whole, they represent thousands of viewers who following weekly the combatants on the green lawn. The artist reflects the fluid changing of emotions in a picturesque reversal conclusion. The large black in the small white circles reminds the viewer of pupils, opened wide in amazement or scarecly believable delight; the spot of black in the large white fields, invoke thoughts of angry frustration or strained attention. In the drama of the game, the viewer recognises the drama of her own life, comforting led/directed by rules, that, often enough, leave something to be desired. A fight of representation takes place on the playing field. This fight is not only a contest about winning and losing, but one of good and bad, heroes and rogues, of crises of meaning and epiphanies.
How, exactly, Julia Neuenhausen recognises the parable-like moves of the game becomes clear when she adds a ball to the room-installation, on which sentences appear from the soccer reportings of Heribert Fassbender. Each one of these statements can be read as a laconic commentary on life or as a pragmatic philosophical pronouncement. There is talk of a”classical false start,” a “duell of prestige,” and a “pass to no man’s land.” The game becomes a metaphor for life. The artist subtly attempts to formally accent these dimensions. The pale red-brown (MDF faserplatte) was chosen as the material for the stadium because it appears “just like skin color”(J.N.). Skin is also an idea that plays a role in the colored backgrounds of the eye pictures. And the scale of her sculpture was led by her own body dimensions.
The installation is like a picture that the viewer can walk in to. Indeed, she is taken in, in that the happenings discuss/ refer to her.
Since times of aniquity, the stadium was a beloved meeting place where poeple of all classes were brought together. To this day, the stadium remains a democratic space par excellence, despite VIP lounges and Westkurve, two elements that Julia Neuenhausen has magically marked out with in her stadium-sculpture by way of neglecting certain details. The stadium is also the one of last places where a society can produce itself. The fans are not only passive observers, but elemental parts of the event and performance. One only needs to notice how – especially in the case of a boring match – the fans take over the initiative and begin to sing, and agitate.
It is through the theme of self-staging that the title of the installation gets ambiguous meanings. The Throw-in can be understood not only as a classical move of a player but also in terms of the participation of the viewer in the spectacle. As move the Einwurf maintains a unique characteristic. The player, who throws in, is in that moment, at once in the game (field) and outside. He is both player and onlooker. This brief moment, more than any other, suggests the possibility that the witch’s cauldron – stadium can be stirred for a few seconds, and that the hectic events on the playing field are frozen. For the player who does the Throw-in, this moment becomes unreal and abstract as Julia Neuenhausen’s installation.
The Throw-in can be understood a a self – description of the life of the artist. Every artist is actor and viewer, maintains a part in the social “vita activa”, and follows in the same time in profession and through call of a vita contemplativa. Every artistic work is a Throw-in, with which the artist contributes to the societal discourse. With which the artist exposes her/himself in front of critics, with which she/he succeeds or fails — though often enough, these categories can be unterstood relatively speaking. As gesture and attitude the Throw-in is in any case important. With it, the artist passes the ball to the spectator. (It is up to her how she will respond. (whether she will receive the pass)
Michael Stöber