The Chamber

Erik Niedling with Ingo Niermann: The Chamber

Mar 9 - Apr 13, 2013
Opening: Saturday, Mar 9, 7-10pm
Exile

»Erik Niedling would like to be buried in Pyramid Mountain, the largest tomb of all time, conceived by writer Ingo Niermann. Therefore a structure at least 200 meters high is chiseled out of a mountain and re-covered with the excavated material after Niedling’s internment, thus restoring it to its original form.

To make this goal a reality, Niedling lived one year as though it were his last. During this time he designed his own burial chamber. Refraining from his previous artistic work as a photographer and archivist of material built, planted, and photographed by others, he wholly dedicated himself to his own life and its relics.

Particular attention was paid to a night in the late 1990s, in which the physical and psychological excesses he experienced with a group of friends in his hometown of Erfurt culminated in Niedling’s decision to become an artist. Like Niedling’s previous works, Chamber deals with the notion of vanishing—this time, his own disappearance and that of his work. In doing so, Niedling experiences himself not as a victim of evolution, but rather as an “owner” in the Stirnerian sense of the word, one who playfully rehearses his own demise and retains control over his work even after his death.

For the exhibition at Exile the Chamber cycle is displayed like in a walk-in-closet to stress the transitory character of the work till it is finally becoming part of Pyramid Mountain. (Text by Ingo Niermann)«