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It’s All a Façade (Alles Fassade)
Never Mind Shelf (Regal Egal)
by Marlene Haring, 2005

exterior of an art gallery building, dimensions variable
washroom with mirror, Nivea cream, dimensions variable
wooden planks 200 x 50 cm, mounted on a wall with brackets, action by Marlene Haring, Galerie Mäzzanin, Vienna, 2005
C prints, 53 x 80 cm, 45 x 67 cm, 35 x 57 cm

Marlene Haring exhibited three pieces in the exhibition. The first, on the exterior façade of the gallery, was entitled IT’S ALL A FAÇADE. In fact, Haring’s only intervention on the façade was to stop temporarily the work of the builders renovating it. Towards the end of the show, the half-done façade will be completed by the workers and made into a normal Vienna exterior.

Inside, at the exhibition opening, someone was lying on a shelf two and a half metres up, facing the wall. The gallery-crowd filled the freshly-renovated galleries which became animated, loud and filled with smoke. No movement was visible on the shelf except, on closer inspection, the body breathing. It was Haring lying up there, maybe sleeping, maybe not, seemingly calm and quiet in contrast with the surroundings. With the title NEVER MIND SHELF (REGAL EGAL in German), the piece was a ‘performance’ or ‘action’ as well as the retreat from, refusal and parody of performance. The shelf which remained in the gallery after the ‘inaction’ was finished survives as an empty relict of the performance and the pastiche of a relict (as the title suggests).

In the washroom on the way to the gallery toilet you could see once more IT’S ALL A FAÇADE. The mirror above the sink, stretching the whole width of the little room, was covered with a thick layer of white in impressive strokes. Only the smell revealed that it is Nivea again. It is not the first time the popular skin cream has appeared in Haring’s interventions on mirrors or façades, confronting the nose, obstructing the eyes and asserting the body. Her last Nivea-on-mirror piece (in the public toilet of the Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver) was called WHAT MATTERS IS WHAT YOU SEE.

Description by Julia Wayne