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Tobias Rehberger's "the chicken-and-egg-no-problem wall-painting"
by Thomas Wagner | Mar 14, 2008

This is the place to enjoy it, the real fun of a productive confusion of the senses and the mind. Because Tobias Rehberger, who together with Claus Richter will this year be creating a major installation in the Frankfurt Festhalle on the occasion of "The Design Annual - inside: showtime", is currently leaving viewers marvelously puzzled, not to say astonished in Amsterdam. "The chicken-and-egg-no-problem wall-painting" is what, with a smile, he has called his light-hearted and deep-thought presentation at the Stedelijk Museum, which is many things side-by-side and at once: Retrospective and all-in installation, wall painting and shadow cabinet, sculptural show and media spectacle. How is that possible? Well, quite simply: In a long, narrow room, lit by only one spotlight, 24 of Rehberger's works, made between 1994 and 2008, stand alongside one another, forming more than just a row. The stunned question is: What is real, what is shadow? What is light, what is color? Until, with all the transformations and shadows, you no longer really know what is an original, what an image, a projection or a wall painting. And thus Rehberger leads those knowledgeable art viewers who always think they know what art is, visually, discursively and firmly up the garden path - or back and forth between being and semblance, chicken and egg, egg and chicken …The exhibition in Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam is on show until May 25, 2008. For further details, click www.stedelijk.nl.

Tobias Rehberger, Photo: Ernst van Deursen
Tobias Rehberger, Photo: Ernst van Deursen
Photo: Gert Jan van Rooij, Amsterdam
Photo: Gert Jan van Rooij, Amsterdam
Photo: Gert Jan van Rooij, Amsterdam
Man with Big Cock
Interview with Tobias Rehberger