Marie-France Goerens, Florian Regl, Lukas Troberg :
Maissau 2015

In 2009, the town of Maissau approached the panel of experts at the Department of Public Art Lower Austria. It was planning to build a bypass around Maissau to divert traffic away from the town, but it was worried it would also divert potential visitors along with it. They therefore came up with the idea to present constantly changing temporary art interventions in public spaces around the town. The Sculpture and Multimedia class at the Universität für Angewandte Kunst (University of Applied Arts) in Vienna and its teacher Erwin Wurm organized an internal competition in which Marie-France Goerens, Fabian-Benjamin Rainer, Florian Regl, and Lukas Troberg emerged as the winners. Six years later, after the bypass was built and Maissau had acquired a new look, the projects were finally realized as permanent installations. In terms of theme, the designs by the former students refer to a primordial ocean whose shores supposedly ran along the distinct ridge in Maissau. Lukas Troberg’s lighthouse, for instance, reminds us of the dangers of maneuvering boats and cars and directs travelers to safety in the Maissau “harbor.” Luftlinie (Air Line) by Florian Regl brings the sea back to Maissau with the help of a billboard on the side of the road that lets people daydream about the past or personal longings. Not far from Luftlinie, Marie-France Goerens created a kind of trompe l’oeil in which the surroundings seem to retreat into the far distance when looking through a colored pane of glass.