What will Inge do next?
Art in Public Spaces with Inges Idee

Last year a giant snowman appeared in Singapore. Recently, the walls of a physics building at the University in Greifswald have been oozing a bright blue material, and a gnome with a long, long cap has taken up residence outside a huge office building in Tokyo. What is going on? It’s hard to say, but it has something to do with Inge. In fact, it was all her idea. Inges Idee (Inge’s Idea) is a collaboration between four independent artists, Hans Hemmert, Axel Lieber, Thomas A. Schmidt and Georg Zey, who joined forces in 1992 to enter competitions and design proposals for works of art in public spaces. Humor, the bright colors of Pop and manipulations of scale all play into their work, and the numerous commissions they have won - a school, several universities, a hospital, a shopping mall, an airport and many more - attest to the success and appeal of the Inges Idee’s eye-catching wit.

Some ask how four different artists can work together to create projects with such a strong, coherent personality. However, when the four artists come together in Berlin to work on competitions, they put their heads together in highly creative brainstorming processes, which are often based on Surrealist discussion techniques. Through what might seem like a chaotic development process, they take into consideration the context, architecture, history and use of the site - and always seem to add an ingenious twist. For example, the Singapore snowman, installed next to a Toyo Ito shopping mall, looks unusually slim. In a northern climate the snowman could be considered one of our first childhood experiences with public art. In a tropical latitude, the statue almost functions as a memorial to the dwindling figure of a snowman that has somehow found his way too far to the south. In Greifswald, bright blue goo is dripping down the huge cement wall of a lecture hall in an illustration of the principle of adhesion. A drip bead has formed at the tip, but a force is holding it back from splashing onto the atrium below.

In their most recent project for Köpenick, Berlin, several horses charge down the grass divider in the middle of a street. They seem to have escaped from the pedestals of various military monuments, thrown their riders and are taking off in a delightfully anarchic dash. Remember, if something seems awry, Inge has probably been at work.

For a look at more of Inges Idee realized and unrealized interventions, get a copy of their catalogue of projects 2001-2007 that will be appearing this fall!

Links:
www.ingesidee.de
www.stadtkunstprojekte.de/projekte/kaiak/wett/entwuerfe/inge/inge.html