YRD.Works
Eins zu Eins (One-to-One), 2017
Wood, plasterboard, paint
12.68 x 4.65 x 3.21 m
Courtesy the artists
YRD.Works is an artist and designer collective comprised of Yacin Boudalfa, David Bausch and Ruben Fischer. YRD.Works create temporary spaces and short-term meeting places by constructing architectures in which the artificial and ephemeral is an essential part of the aesthetic.
For the exhibition at the Frankfurter Kunstverein, the collective developed a physically experienceable and performative spatial intervention. The exhibition space on the upper floor of the Kunstverein was deconstructed by YRD.Works. They broke it down it into its individual elements, rebuilt them and arranged them on the floor. Through the precise reproduction of the individual parts, YRD.Works physically appropriated the space, conceiving it not as a place, but as a sequence of walls, ceiling elements and doors. They reducing it to its form and the material from which it was made. The determination of the space was undermined and exposed through the deconstruction. The hierarchy between presentation location and exhibit was changed and renegotiated.
The use of digital tools is an integral part of artistic practice today. Their creative possibilities have expanded the range of what is possible and simultaneously standardized it. The use of 3D programs to design shapes in space has fundamentally changed the way we view real space. YRD.Works explore the interrelation between the manipulability of forms and material in space, between digital imagination and analog concreteness. Where the 3D program allows immediate deconstruction and redesign of objects and architecture, implementation using real materials is time-consuming manual practice.
YRD.Works begin with the spatial intervention even before the possibility of an exhibition. Prior to potential transformation into a work, material is examined for its aesthetic usefulness and the public presentation site analyzed. Fundamental questions about the representation of art and the function of the institutional exhibition space are asked. The scenic and temporary existence of the white cube in its materiality becomes tangible, no longer the implicitly sublime public stage for art. The profane building material is rearranged and elevated to a work of art.
Placed in the space, it is both a sculpture and a stage for viewers. They are called upon to break through the barrier of sculpture and make it a platform for the representation of their physical presence. The inviolability of the sculpture is released for use by the artists; distance and contemplation are abandoned, dissolving the separation between work and viewer. Traces were left on the untouched white surfaces, the work changed over the duration of the exhibition: it was used, worn out and then destroyed.
The artist collective YRD.Works from Offenbach (DE) consists of David Bausch (*1988), Yacin Boudalfa (*1987) und Ruben Fischer (*1987). The artists study art at the University of Art and Design Offenbach. Since 2016 the collective runs the Kressmannhalle, an exhibition space for contemporary art at Offenbach harbour. In 2015 they received the prize of Frankfurter Verein für Künstlerhilfe e.V. In 2017 they will realise several projects with Künstlerhaus Mousonturm, Frankfurt (DE) that are part of the programme Doppelpass – supported by Kulturstiftung des Bundes for a period of two years. In 2018 the collective won the Artprize of the City Nordhorn (DE).
YRD.Works had solo exhibitions in the following institutions (selection):
Städtische Galerie Nordhorn, Nordhorn (DE), Kressmann Halle, Offenbach (DE), Saasfee*Pavillon, Frankfurt am Main (DE), Mousonturm, Frankfurt am Main (DE)
