Losing oneself to find oneself. This too can be a principle of survival. The artist's installation draws inspiration from the spirit of Marcel Duchamp and conceptual art, operating at the intersection of art and non-art. Visitors strolling through the park are intrigued. In the grass, they find a watch. Elsewhere, a pipe. Before a bush, a pair of abandoned boots. On a tree, a solitary hat hangs. A branch bears a woolen coat. By a bench leans a walking stick. Has someone lost something here? No, it is a staging by artist Sebastian Gräfe. The items he scattered throughout the Lenthe park collectively form a portrait of their absent owner—a distinguished middle-aged gentleman. A romantic piece! Perhaps it attests to how someone here shed all their belongings to, as naked as the day they were born, forge an intimate connection with nature. Gräfe's work thrives on a subtle dialectic of construction and deconstruction. The disappearance of his protagonist opens a narrative space for the viewer's imagination—a story that can unfold in ever-new variations with each new gaze upon Gräfe's arrangement. In the pocket of the woolen coat lies a book with the telling title: Le pays où l’on n’arrive jamais. Even more than in many other contemporary works, the viewer becomes a co-author of the artist in this piece.

Text: Michael Stoeber