Skulpturenpark Köln

Awaiting visitors on the edge of the enclosure of the Skulpturenpark Köln is a unusual spectacle. Half concealed by the high bushes looms a pile of disused refrigerators, stacked partly on top of each other, as if simply dumped here - in this well-tended park of all places. An illegal fly-tip used by a desperate scrap dealer? Or an artistic intervention on whose merits opinions may differ? For some years now, Thomas Rentmeister (b. 1964 in Reken, Germany) has been constructing sculptures from refrigerators. At the Depot in the Skulpturenpark Köln the artist dispenses with the usual protective coating applied to his refrigerator-sculptures installed indoors. In their disused abandoned condition, the fridges appear more as a ready-made, than suggestive of Minimal Art. As an exhibition venue, the Skulpturenpark furnishes visitors with a set of rules of perception, with which to identify the objects exhibited here as art. By virtue of his installations, Thomas Rentmeister allows everyday things to exploit their multiple, sculptural and optical possibilities, whilst denying the viewer the opportunity of categorising and defining them.