FRAGMENTS OF A CRISIS: Julian Irlinger

Fragments of a Crisis is a site specific project for Kunsthalle Eckbar at the Kunsthalle Basel by Julian Irlinger for Parcours. It situates a video and readymade toy houses in the venue’s display. This juxtaposition is meant to create a cross historical dialogue to extend the institutional discourse through daily life objects of a more recent history. 

The readymade timber-frame houses—Fachwerkhäuser—in this work are representations of an architectural trope of central-European cultural identity, a style first mentioned in 33 BC by the Roman architect Vitruvius in his work De architectura. Since the 1970s, reproductions of these buildings have been featured, in various incarnations, in the Playmobil line of toys. 

 Julian Irlinger’s work for Art Basel Parcours gets its title from an earlier work of his also called Fragments of a Crisis, a result of the artist’s extensive research into Notgeld—an emergency currency that was issued during the hyperinflation crisis in Germany in the 1920s. The banknotes were designed by numerous artists, incarnating shared political values and divergent artistic ideals. By selecting and focusing on the illustrations of the banknotes in his personal archive, as seen in his video, Irlinger draws attention to the political unconsciousness during the crisis.