Lot 620 D

The work of Paul Thek is extremely complex, every part full of stories, loaded with private experiences, residual relics of an expansive artificiality. Thek transforms galleries available for exhibition into temporary studios, sets up labyrinths and living spaces in museum spaces, in which Fluxus and Dada meet in a surreal environment. The years 1969 to 1974 are unusually successful for Paul Thek. Personalities of the exhibition world such as Harald Szeeman, Christoph Ammann or Pontus Hultén support the artist, whose unusual stagings coin the art and cultural-political term 'installation'. Thek initially installed "A Station of the Cross" in the M. E. Thelen Gallery in Essen in 1972. It took the form of a walk-in chapel which the artist set up again after the exhibition in the attic of a residential house in Essen. It is constructed of extremely fragile materials with walls of battens, wire mesh, brushed newsprint and with blue-painted plastic sheet on the floor. Birch trunks, painted stones, wrapped-up boxes, flowers such as tulips and lilies, toys, a South Sea shell with integrated lighting as well as a cassette recorder with classical music from Beethoven, decorate the Station of the Cross of Christ's suffering. A musical spinning top such as this also plays a central role in the installation. According to rumour, Paul Thek probably discovered a toy shop in Amsterdam in 1969 which was being closed down and selling off its stock, and which inspired him to purchase, among other things, several musical spinning tops from the firm Choral (Fuchs), and to decorate them with white dots of oil lacquer. Not all musical spinning tops find a permanent place in the installations, but like this one, packed in its original box, waits in vain for its musical deployment in Paul Thek's playful, in every respect fantastic image canon.

MvL