Absalon, Cellule 2, 1992
In 1992 the artist Absalon planned six structures,
which he named ‘Cellules’. ‘I would like to make these cells my homes, in which
to define my feelings, to cultivate my behaviors’, he explained. ‘These houses
will be mechanisms of resistance to a society that prevents me from becoming
what I must become.’
The Cellules were planned for six major cities:
Paris, Zurich, New York, Tel Aviv, Frankfurt am Main and Tokyo. Two were
realized.
One of these is currently installed in the voluminous,
austere galleries of the Museum für Gegenwart at the Hamburger Bahnhof in
Berlin. To enter Absalon’s home is a strange experience: the entire
interior is less than ten metres square. You have to shuffle sideways to pass
through the entry threshold. The walls, as well as the limited fixtures and fittings, are modernist white, illuminated by open windows that receive light from fluorescent strips hanging above the structure. There’s a living area
to your left, with cupboards, table, stool and basin.There’s just enough room to turn around to see a tiny space containing a raised
bed, with an adjoining shower/ toilet stall.
Absalon never lived long enough to fulfill his wish
to live and travel between these six restricted cells. Nor did he ever claim
that he would only produce one kind of work for the remainder of his life. Yet
with this project he brings ‘living’ and ‘art’ into extreme, cramped proximity.