INSTALLATIONS BY FRANK BALVE

Frank Balve creates experiential spaces that unfold a unique, physical presence in his installations. Based on literary models and a critical examination of society, he creates complex structures. His works, such as "bloc" or "The Hide," place the viewer in an oppressive setting between surveillance and personal memories. By combining visual and acoustic stimuli, Balve creates a "radius of perception" that turns the installations into accessible psychograms. A tightrope walk between consumption and emotional irritation.

01| ANLAGE | KABINE 3

INSTALLATION (ROOM ) | WOOD / PAPER PULP / GRID | FEBRUARY 2017

In his two-part installation, Frank Balve has created a room-within-a-room situation in which he reduces concrete spaces of religious life to their symbolic concreteness and repositions them in the real world.

The visitor's path leads past a silhouette-like sea of graves to a wayside chapel in the interior of the academy.
The crosses in the "Anlage" are just as empty and anonymous as the "Kabine III" and its white interior; the symbolic meaning of the objects is just as present as their religious legitimization is absent. The alienation of the individual objects in material and color, the cold artificial lighting and the fence as a clear boundary of the "counter-spaces" create a tension between the supposedly quickly graspable objecthood and the transcendent imagery of the evidently artificial spatial situation.
Through the disappearance of all traditional levels of meaning, Frank Balve deliberately transforms not only the individual groups of works into projection surfaces for all kinds of subjective associations, thus making the viewer an integral part of his work. Rather, he succeeds in locating the artwork itself in the reality of everyday life.

02| BLOC
INSTALLATION (ROOM / SOUND) | 20 x 4 x 8 M | PAPER PULP / WOOD / TILES / SPOTLIGHT | JULY 2012

A slide, sandbox, swing, spring bouncer, seesaw, roundabout and a bench: seven modules - reproduced to scale and arranged in a 160-square-meter area - represent the standard inventory of a German playground.
The objects - typically bright-colored, are coated here with soot-blackened pulp, and the dull, porous surfac- es conjure up images of the ash-rain from a volcanic eruption or the charred remains of a fire. A gritty sound installation reinforces the unsettling atmosphere, and the playground appears abandoned, frozen in time. Four spotlights bathe the area in a harsh light, which casts hard-edged shadows and mercilessly illuminates every corner.
While on real playgrounds sandy surfaces reduce the risk of injury, the toys here rest on hard, aseptically shiny tiled flooring that conjures up associations with a slaughterhouse or hospital; the playground mutates into a laboratory, the children into unwilling participants in a brutal experiment. The surrounding chain-link fence creates a cage rather than a shelter; there is no entrance, thus causing the viewer to assume the role of an outside observer and supervisor.
The simplified forms and intentional inaccuracies illustrate the model character of the work. Less a place of play than of surveillance and struggle, Balve’s “Bloc” is reminiscent of a prison yard (in French slang the word “bloc” means “prison” or “bunker”) or a boxing ring. The playground appears as a metaphor for human existence and action in society - as a heterotopia, as elaborated by Michel Foucault: a separate “counter-space” that functions according to its own rules, and thus represents social relations in a particular way. SO

03| CLUSTER
INSTALLATION (SPACE / SOUND) | WOOD / ACRYLIC / LAMPS | OCTOBER 2013

The installation consists of 63 walk-in, architectural constructions that are reminiscent of rooms and are open at the top. All elements are painted white. A wide board symbolizes a table and a somewhat narrower one, a bench that invites you to sit down. Only a tiny spotlight directed at the table illuminates the room. The cubicles are reminiscent of cells, not only because of their sparse furnishings, but also because of their arrangement: In several, long rows, they are arranged uniformly next to each other. Nothing distinguishes them; only the door-like openings point in different directions: Sometimes they face each other, sometimes they point in one direction, sometimes in the other. Balve uses the contrast between the strict, simple construction of the cells and the historical architecture of the gallery to create a special tension.

04| PARK
INSTALLATION (SPACE / SOUND) | 480 M2 | APRIL 2013

SHARK GLASS BOX
| STONE | 500 x 1150 x 250 MM | APRIL 2013

PAPER SCULPTURES
| PAPER PULP | APRIL 2013

WHEELCHAIR
| 1.2 x 0.8 x 0.5 M | PAPER CELLULOSE | APRIL 2013

With his installation "Park", Frank Balve designs an urban sculpture park underground. Inspired by French baroque gardens, symmetrically arranged sculptures and objects invite visitors to stroll and linger. While in real parks, however, nature with its supposed healing powers stands as a guarantor of inner purification, cold, hard materials dominate in this "park". In contrast to the Baroque garden, whose sculpture program serves as a cheerful distraction, the sculptural and plastic objects in the Maximilians Forum create predominantly unpleasant images.

05| MENSCHENLEER

INSTALLATION (SPACE / SOUND) | JULY / OCTOBER 2016

GERIPPE (BOOT)

| WOOD / ACRYL / ASH PIGMENT | 113 x 660 x 233 CM | JULY / OCTOBER 2016

RING 3
| VIDEO | 14 MIN. LOOP | WOODEN BOX 97 x 59 x 17 CM | APRIL 2013

UNTITLED (WIND)
| PAPER PULP ON CANVAS | 80 x 100 CM | JULY 2016

06| KABINE 2
INSTALLATION (ROOM / SOUND) | PAPER CELLULOSE / WOOD / CLOTHING (FABRICS) / LAMPS / FLAME SOOTH | HOUSE 2.5 x 6 M | JULY 2013

KLEIDERLEICHEN
CLOTHING / FLAME RUSSIA / PAPER CELLULOSE / WOOD | 220 x 40 CM (3 UNIQUE PIECES) | 2013

Frank Balve's "Kabine" is actually a house within a house, which with its simple basic forms
reminiscent of a chapel or a playhouse. Inside the black plastered house, which is located in a darkened room, a mysterious scene is illuminated by strobe-like light: From under a bed, vast quantities of old clothes spill out, taken from the estates of deceased people. Cut into strips that correspond to the dimensions of the narrow entrance door, the clothes also form the basis of the seven paper sculptures that populate the narrow space around the house as "corpses of clothes". The viewer is not only encouraged to have a polysensory experience of the space and actively participate in the creation of meaning, but also becomes a performative element of the installation himself when he looks through the window panes and encounters the gazes of other visitors behind the panes opposite.

07| TIMBER LA RUINE

INSTALLATION (SPACE / SOUND / VIDEO ) | PLASTER / WOOD / ASH / TV / CEMENT | JULY 2014 | AUGUST 2010

An abstract tree trunk (9 x 5 x 3 meters) breaks through the floor and extends centrally over most of the darkened room. The broken, seemingly completely dead trunk is the sound body of a calm, repetitive sound installation. Cables sprout from its broken branches. This tangle of mostly cut, torn electrical conductors, which looks like veins, connects the trunk in places with objects that are formally reminiscent of oversized sirens or megaphones.

Integrated into these eight objects (each 0.5 x 0.5 x 0.5 meters) are screens on which a video can be seen. They illuminate the room, fill it with "moving light" and fill it with a "surround sound installation".

The light and sound elements of the "sirens" enter into a dialog with the sound arrangements of the tree trunk through changing image/sound rhythms and periods of silence. The installation uses sculptural and audiovisual means to create an atmospheric ambience.

The expansive installation entitled "Drunk" combines media art with sculpture, music and poetry. One of the sources of inspiration for the work is Arthur Rimbaud's poem "The Drunken Ship". A new text was created from Rimbaud's poem, which reinforces the overall impression and mentally interweaves the individual components of the installation even more closely.
60 elaborately produced videos are shown on a screen wall consisting of 125 television sets. The screens and DVD players stand in a veneered industrial heavy-duty shelf. Opposite this is a shipwreck broken in two. The multiscreen wall, which dominates the room like a huge, flickering and flashing monument, illustrates the mass and complexity of information that people are exposed to on a daily basis.
For the films, material was selected from the Internet, television, cell phone videos, spam mails and other open sources and elaborately edited in various ways. The close personal involvement with the subject matter is reflected in the aesthetics, cuts and manual editing of individual images.
Another element of the work is a 60-minute sound installation. The music is an original composition of reworked noise that reflects the electronic component. This soundscape is accompanied by a classical arrangement (piano and string instruments), which takes up the lyricism of the poem once again, illustrating the connection between the screen wall and the shipwreck opposite.
The self-made, white wreck lies as a haven of peace in the glow of the colorful television screen. As if frozen in time, it conveys the idea of a failed attempt to survive on the wave of information overload. With its timelessness and apparent standstill, it forms a counterweight to the ever-continuing flow of information. Text, video and sound work in a similar way. The source material is altered, alienated, cut up and reassembled in order to create a new form.

09| FRAGMENT

INSTALLATION (ROOM / SOUND / VIDEO / PHOTOGRAPHY) | 8 x 2 x 4 M | OCTOBER 2012

PAPER PULP / WOOD / TILES / METAL / LIGHT BOXES / SCREENS

“Fragment” explores the theme of memory. Formally, the accessible installation is a new structure created out of remnants left over from a room‘s reconstruction that Balve then arranged based on personal memories. The fragments are reconstructed as a sequence of three rooms that have lost their original coherence. The number of coordinates lessens from room to room, like a fading memory that is increasingly fragmented, until it is finally reduced to a few disjointed images. The combination of sculptural elements, moving video images, photographs and disturbing sounds resembles the multimedia character of memories that can include pictorial elements, movie-like scenes, sounds, and especially feelings.

Photographs and videos serve a key function here, referring to earlier events in these spaces. They show a female and a male protagonist in the original space. Only vaguely recognizable, the figures are in ambiguous situations: spookily and in slow motion, the woman moves on all fours across the dirty floor, and a gigantic man seems to disappear with his head in the ceiling of the dark room.

The surreal, nightmarish images suggest sinister associations with individual fears and violent scenarios. Although the viewer may attempt to construct a coherent story, or at least relationships between the portrayed scenes, their significance ultimately remains mysterious. This also applies to the objects, seemingly randomly left behind, distributed in the space. Bottles, cables and dirty dishes are visible in parts of the photographs.

Who could have used these things; what happened here?

The place seems charged with the energy of past events, which are sensed or imagined by the observer and perhaps even interwoven with his or her memories. An unsettling feeling arises, an irritation, like the aftermath of a nightmare. The represented decay and anonymous bodies with their blurred faces give the work a metaphorical dimension: The dilapidated derelict house becomes a symbol for the human psyche, for the uncontrollable processes of our memory. SO

10| LEMNISKATE
INSTALLATION (VIDEO AND SOUND) | VIDEO - 106 MINUTES | WOOD / GLASS / TV / BODY BAGS | JANUARY 2011

11| 120

INSTALLATION (LIGHT / VIDEO / SPACE / SOUND) | PAINTING / PAPER SCULPTURES / PAPER / WOOD / ACRYLIC / WALL PAINT / TILES / FABRIC / BAROQUE FURNITURE / CARPET / WINDOW | MAY 2012

Frank Balve's extremely multi-layered work often revolves around uncomfortable themes of social and ethical relevance. In elaborate spatial installations, he combines non-representational painting, video installations, paper sculptures, poetry and sound collages to create multimedia concepts on a museum scale. He often refers to works of classical panel painting or literature and plays confidently with traditional genre concepts.

Surveillance, voyeurism, media consumption, institutionalized violence: "120" is based on the novel fragment "The Hundred and Twenty Days of Sodom or the School of Debauchery" by the Marquis de Sade (1785), which is one of the most controversial works of world literature due to its chilling depiction of sexual perversion. Balve, on the other hand, focuses his attention on the usually overlooked socio-critical dimension of the text, which denounces the institutionalized control and disciplining of the "others" by those in power.

While the first exhibition room is designed as a representative baroque interior with the classical visual arts of painting and sculpture, a darkened and tiled back room evokes associations with a slaughterhouse or prison. Three video projections of naked, crouching bodies with black hoods can be seen in the corners - a pose that evokes images of torture victims from prison camps stored in the collective memory. To the sounds of a deconstructed Chopin prelude, the life-size body projections, rendered in extreme slow motion, unfold a disturbing yet captivating effect, tearing the viewer away from his overstimulated everyday life and forcing him to meditative calm.

12| THE HIDE
INSTALLATION (ROOM / SOUND / VIDEO) | 8 x 3.5 x 2.45 M | JUNE 2011
METAL / WOOD / 30 TELEVISIONS / MANNEQUIN 180 x 60 CM | VIDEO 106 MINUTES

The work is a large-scale media installation composed of two sculptural elements, one of which is a free-floating barrel consisting of 30 equal-sized TVs. These are linearly arranged in groups of three around the barrel, like the windows of a slot machine. Displayed are rotating gambling symbols (lemon, melon, the number 7, etc.) and staccato light passages. The wheel is 2 x 2 meters. The second element is a doll, situated in a corner on the floor. Its color matches that of the wheel. The doll is 1.80 x 0.60 meters. The sculptures and statues are accompanied by a sound installation. This sound collage consists of gaming operation sounds from casinos. The subject of gambling is the starting point for the sound installation. The theme of the art class exhibition is Native Americans. Frank Balve explores the aspect of gambling and its effect on operators and visitors (addiction). An additional topic he addresses is the veneer of society and diversion of historical facts. Frank Balve

13| 1. GESANG

INSTALLATION (CONCEPTUAL PAINTING) | ACRYLIC AND WALL PAINT ON CANVAS | 42 INDIVIDUAL PARTS | 15.00 X 2.80 X 4.00 M | OCTOBER 2011

In the spatial installation "Erster Gesang", which he created especially for firstlines, the artist refers to the Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri. Frank Balve has created a 15 x 2.8 meter painting consisting of 42 individual canvases and an audiovisual installation based on this major work by the Italian poet, which can be seen on 15 monitors that visitors have to cross.

Frank Balve's attempt to fit all 34 of Dante's cantos into the 95 square meters of the gallery seems daring at first, but after intensive observation it turns out to be an outstanding, abstract staging of the literary classic. Through intense color symbolism, strong contrasts in the handling of the rooms, exciting vistas and the change of media, tempo and style, the crossing of the Styx is actually made tangible.

14| EXTRAKTION

15| ROOM

INSTALLATION (SPACE / SOUND / VIDEO ) | WOOD / GLASS / TV / PLASTIC | ACRYLIC / CARPET / STONE / PAPER |

COLLABORATION WITH NICO KIESE | JANUARY 2011

Four three-meter showcases and a scaffolding made of pallets to connect them. This is what the installation looks like. Visitors are greeted by darkness in the hall and a sound collage that fills the room with noises and tones that sound like they come from an underwater world. Two students, Frank Balve and Nico Kiese, use the historic auditorium as an exhibition space and want to make a statement: art is made here during the academy year. Frank Balve believes it is important that artists who are currently in the production flow can also exhibit their work. Their project in the historic auditorium of the art academy is multimedia: one display case contains the original set for Frank Balve's film "Aschetaucher"; the others contain variations of the film. One box shows the film on 24 televisions, each with its own rhythm; when the film is stopped, the image is reassembled. In another, the image is turned upside down, the movements are slowed down, different perspectives are superimposed. In the third box, only shadows or outlines can be seen.

16| ABTEILUNG 2

INSTALLATION (UNDERGROUND SPACE ) | 3 X 3 X 3 M | WOOD / PAPER / PLEXIGLASS | JULY 2011