Sculptures in the outdoor area of the KinderKunstLabor
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CO:CO … Co-Create
In Altoona Park in St. Pölten, a 15-meter-high linden tree is growing in front of the KinderKunstLabor (Children’s Art Lab) for Contemporary Art.[i] From the path leading through the park to the Culture District, a glimpse of something bright yellow has been shimmering through the tree’s broad crown since 2024. It is a cone-shaped tower standing almost four-and-a-half meters high with a tapered top culminating in a small flag. Four more tower objects are spread around deeper within the park. All consist of horizontal bands and vertical poles made of metal. Another one of them is also a high tower with a flag. The three shorter tower structures are about 110 centimeters in height and have the shape of truncated cones that are open on top. All of the bright metal objects are grouped around a seven-meter-long vault, which has seven ceiling-high entrances and passageways as well as five round windows. When it rains, the surface of this large empty cavern made of sprayed concrete shines a dark color, and when the sun is out, it appears a dull light gray. This structure is the center of the sculptural ensemble CO:CO by Christine and Irene Hohenbüchler.
“It’s a tent, a cave, a hideout; you can sit in it, or take a break, maybe even hide”: this is how kids from the groups of child advisors of the KinderKunstLabor have described the grotto’s organic form.[ii] The concrete sculpture has no corners or right angles and appears as if it were cowering and hunched over between the bushes and trees in the park. Other kids, unable to hide their fascination, have said, “It looks like a dinosaur bone, or the roots of a redwood tree, like something left over from the Stone Age; it could also be the trunk of a mammoth.” The metal tower structures with their bright yellow color, on the other hand, could be from the future: They might be on a ship, at a beach, or receiving signals from another planet. It is precisely by not assigning the ensemble at Altoona Park any functions that Christine and Irene Hohenbüchler send an important message with CO:CO. They leave it ambiguous and mysterious.
The stretched basic forms of the metal objects, which we can see through, direct our gaze toward the KinderKunstLabor building with its distinct, slatted façade made of larch wood. The outdoor area around it is an integral part of the overall idea behind this exhibition building and has been conceived as a sculpture park that enables the seamless movement between inside and outside. Christine and Irene Hohenbüchler spent over a year developing CO:CO[iii] for this outdoor area in a co-creative dialogue with the kids in the KinderKunstLabor’s Art Ideas Workshop and Children’s Advisory Board.[iv] The result is an ensemble of works that fulfills the kids’ wishes, inspires new ways of perceiving, and creates unfamiliar perspectives—all in the highest artistic quality. CO:CO has been integrated into the park’s ecosystem and can be entered, climbed on, and touched. Its language of forms and the use of different materials give it an extraordinary, multifaceted, and heterogenous appearance.
Public Art Lower Austria helped to initiate a selection process in 2022 in art for kids that was complex, lasted several months, and included many voices. Christine and Irene Hohenbüchler’s design CO:CO convinced the jury, which also included six kids. One of them was Arin Berk, a co-creator in the Art Ideas Workshop and a member of the jury who was eleven at the time.[v] On seeing Christine and Irene Hohenbüchler’s model, he spontaneously suggested CO:CO as a title, and the two artists immediately adopted it. Christine and Irene Hohenbüchler also visited the groups of kids in the Children’s Advisory Board at the St. Pölten sports school and the Ratzersdorf kindergarten, where they gave workshops. In return, the children from the Art Ideas Workshop were invited to Christine and Irene Hohenbüchler’s studio.
The Lion, Wittgenstein, and the Scalpel
When Andrea Maurer visited the fourth-grade class 4B at the Otto Glöckel Elementary School in St. Pölten in the summer of 2022, she brought a quote by Ludwig Wittgenstein about a lion with her.[vi] Together with the kids, the artist used this quote as the basis to develop a new installation called Buchstabentheater (Theater of Letters) for the KinderKunstLabor for Contemporary Art. Maurer’s work—a pavilion visible from afar in bright red, blue, and yellow with a one-way mirror—has been standing in Altoona Park since September 2024. The park, which was named after the city of Altoona in the US—a railroad city and also the sister city of St. Pölten—is home not only to sculptures like Christine and Irene Hohenbüchler’s CO:CO, but also to a predator: a mountain lion,[vii] which is the emblem of the town’s sister-city relationship. For the children of the Lower Austrian capital, the animal sculpture made of sandstone is an integral part of Altoona Park, which surrounds the KinderKunstLabor. The iconographic figure of the mountain lion therefore immediately invoked a logical connection with the Wittgenstein quote selected by the artist.
Nevertheless, the journey from the quote to the two-meter-high Buchstabentheater built in the green area around the KinderKunstLabor was long. The outdoor area was designed to be a sculpture park and is an integral part of the overall idea behind the exhibition building with smooth transitions between inside and outside. Maurer developed the Buchstabentheater[viii] for this outdoor area together with the kids in the co-creative panels of the KinderKunstLabor.[ix] The kids in the Art Ideas Workshop and in the groups of the Children’s Advisory Board—like the kids from the 4B fourth-grade class—could deconstruct, experiment, and create something new with Maurer. Instead of following any rules, they invented new ones. Anahita Neghabat, a researcher in residence who analyzed this process, wrote in her research paper about the KinderKunstLabor: “This joyful exploration with all the senses and the deconstruction of letters and language provide a stark contrast to how letters are traditionally used—for example, in the context of school: namely, as something that is ordered and controlled, something that is correct or incorrect.”[x]
Some kids created new words out of the roughly 30-centimeter-high letters by standing next to each other in various constellations, each holding their letter of choice in front of their upper bodies with both hands. They then assembled their own letters out of the prints of these using a scalpel and glue. Maurer also brought an illuminated, stage-like cube with a one-way mirror mounted on the front, enabling the newly constructed letters to appear on stage.
Finally, Maurer drew on these artistic processes to develop an accessible, triangular letter sculpture. The work combined the abstract forms of the letters with a physical and spatial experience. Specially for this pavilion, she created a cosmos of meanings and letters that people can experience for themselves. The floor and ceiling of the sculpture each consist of a large horizontal letter “A.” The roof, which is an “A” with blue on the edges and red on the top and bottom surfaces, hovers two meters above the parallel gray “A” embedded in the ground. Between ceiling and ground, at the bottom of one of the A’s legs, is a gray “J” that can also be used to sit on, while at the bottom of the other leg is a supporting round yellow pole. Opposite these, at the top of the A, inside and outside merge together in the semi-transparent one-way mirror set within a shiny red frame. The pavilion is open on all sides and offers a wide range of possibilities for perceiving and interacting with it.
Andrea Maurer’s proposal for Buchstabentheater was one of two designs that were chosen in a process involving the active participation and votes of co-creating kids in the Art Ideas Workshop and the Children’s Advisory Board. Public Art Lower Austria then helped to initiate a selection process in 2022 in art for kids that was complex, lasted several months, and included many voices. In the end, Maurer’s Buchstabentheater convinced the jury, which included six kids.
Mona Jas
[i] In this new exhibition building for young audiences in St. Pölten, international contemporary art is presented and developed in co-creative processes together with groups of kids in the Children’s Advisory Board and the Art Ideas Workshop in a dialogue with artists. The building was designed by the architectural firm Schenker Salvi Weber ZT GmbH from Vienna and was awarded the prestigious Austrian Bauherr:innen Preis (Contractor’s Prize) in 2024. The KinderKunstLabor is also a pilot project for providing qualification and research in art education and outreach in educational and cultural institutions.
[ii] Andreas Hoffer, art educator at the KinderKunstLabor, recorded these statements on January 27, 2022, in the Children’s Advisory Board group of the Otto Glöckel Elementary School. The Children’s Advisory Board is active in various educational institutions and after-school programs. As a decision-making panel for co-creation at the KinderKunstLabor, it consists of entire school classes and kindergarten groups. The results of their artistic work are integrated into the KinderKunstLabor’s decision-making processes. The Children’s Advisory Board provides essential input for the development of this new institution’s program and is a mirror and resonance chamber for kids’ perspectives and opinions.
[iii] Public Art Lower Austria, https://koernoe.at/de/aktuell/prasentation-der-aussenraumskulpturen-am-kinderkunstlabor.
[iv] Mona Jas, “Das KinderKunstLabor – ein ko-kreativer Ort mit Kindern und für Kinder und ihre Erwachsenen,” in neuesmuseum: Hands on! Zukunft Kindermuseen 23-4 (2023), 24–27.
[v] In addition to the Children’s Advisory Board, the Art Ideas Workshop is a central body for co-creation at the KinderKunstLabor and is open to everyone. The participants are integrated into planning and decision-making processes at all levels. Since 2021, 10 to 15 kids and teenagers between 5 and 13 years of age have been meeting after school or after kindergarten several times each month at the KinderKunstLabor to attend art workshops with artists and/or people working in the areas of visual art, design, architecture, and art education, as well as with members of the KinderKunstLabor team.
[vi] “If a lion could speak, we couldn’t understand him.” Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G.E.M. Anscombe, P.M.S. Hacker and Joachim Schulte (Oxford: Blackwell, 2009), 227.
[vii] Cahit Koccoban, Mountain Lion from Pennsylvania (USA) (2003), based on a sculpture at Pennsylvania State University.
[viii] See note 3.
[ix] See note 4.
[x] Anahita Neghabat, “Let the Material Lead!,” in Können Institutionen (laufen) lernen? Forschende Ansätze im KinderKunstLabor, ed. Mona Jas and Aron Weigl (Vienna: Passagen, 2024), 29–61, here 42.
Contributions
Buchstabentheater (Theater of Letters)
With her Buchstabentheater (Theater of Letters), Andrea Maurer has created a walk-in sculpture in the shape of an “A” that is open on all sides and offers a wide range of ways to experience and interact with it. For example, the interior features a supple “J” that serves as both a support and a seat, as well as a semi-transparent one-way mirror that reverses the outside and inside. Whether observing, playing, or exploring by touch: The Letter Theater invites visitors to be enveloped and surrounded by it, to grasp its essence and engage with it—not least to explore how language shapes our perception. It is an ensemble of letters that imposes no rules.
CO:CO
The second project is the organic-looking object CO:CO by Christine and Irene Hohenbüchler. The name comes from the children at the Kunstideenwerkstatt. Based on their drawings and wishes, the artists designed a cave-like sculpture that also resembles an animal-like creature. It offers glimpses in and out, playing with the concepts of inside and outside, hiding and shelter. This is complemented by several metal objects whose shapes and colors contrast with the concrete sculpture, serving as bright markers among the trees. The twin sisters work in various media and create, among other things, large-scale spatial installations. Their work often incorporates the results of open creative processes and participatory elements.
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