Christine Hohenbüchler, Irene Hohenbüchler :
SPZ - ASO Amstetten

The second project completed by Irene and Christine Hohenbüchler for Lower Austria was also planned for a school. Whereas in 1998 together with the children they redesigned an area of the schoolhouse in Pulkau, in Amstetten the aim was to place a sign that would create an identity for the two buildings of the polytechnical school and the special school that lie next to each other. In working with children and also with psychiatric patients or prisoners a kind of 'multiple authorship' develops in which the artists adopt the role of a director or mediator. The result is works very different to the 'masterpieces' generally encountered in the market-oriented art business. Rather than serving the cult of the genius one of the Hohenbüchlers' starting points is to discover peoples' creative potential by taking a different approach. The four light globes that now connect the two buildings are derived from primary design principles and are suited to the needs and methods of perception of the pupils of different ages from six to fifteen. The four steel spheres of different sizes with a circular ornament have round openings at the centre for the light. They seem to have landed on the lawn between the two buildings like unidentified flying objects: cheerful colourful symbols that begin to glow in the evening.
"Offering people a visual mouthpiece" is how Irene and Christine Hohenbüchler describe their work, and although in this case the work is a sculptural deposition, criteria such as communication, linking and adding on, which constitute the Hohenbüchlers' network of art-historical and literary references, play a decisive role.
(Susanne Neuburger)