Martina Venanzoni
Seestück, Kunsthalle Arbon
2024

Several objects are arranged in the vast exhibition space of the Kunsthalle Arbon. White metal tubs, some of them filled with water, are placed on the floor. Some stand on legs, others lie directly on the floor, some are turned upside down. Wooden bars are leaning against the walls. The objects in Max Leiß's exhibition Seestück are made from used wheelbarrows that Leiß has dismantled into individual parts, sandblasted and lacquered. Together they form an abstract narrative - on Kunsthalle Arbon, on Lake Constance, and on how mankind appropriates and shapes landscape, intervening with architecture and functional objects.

The industrial building of Kunsthalle Arbon dates back to the early 1930s and was constructed as a storehouse of the Schädler company, known for patenting a wheelbarrow with a pointed tub that is since of widespread use in Switzerland. Some of the barrow parts in the exhibition are of this type, but there are other forms as well. Leiß bought them second-hand and collected them from various places. Wheelbarrows are used to carry out construction or gardening work, to domesticate nature and adapt it to our needs. By dismantling the tools into their individual components and presenting them as sculptures, Leiß relieves them of their immediate function. The white color makes the objects look model-like, drawing attention to their form and their status as actors in the interplay between nature and culture. Filled with water, they become small ponds, while at the same time floating like boats in the exhibition space. As sculptures, they unite the history of Kunsthalle Arbon with the landscape of Lake Constance.

A Seestück is a genre of landscape painting. While the English term seascape refers to a depiction of the sea, the German Seestück allows a more open reading, echoing the words for Lake and for seeing. As in painting, the landscape of Leiß' exhibition is a product of perception. In the upper room, two photographs are presented. They were taken at the Rhine near Basel, where the artist lives and where the water of Lake Constace passes by. In preparation of the exhibition, Leiß undertook an eight-day canoe trip circling the immense Lake, starting and ending at Kunsthalle Arbon. Film footage taken on this journey is presented in an installation in the basement of the Kunsthalle. The scenes show seemingly untouched nature as well as human interventions, buildings and objects of industrialization, inviting us to reflect on our relation to the environment and on our impulse to form and to rework it.