Luka Fineisen
Ergänzung | Hallenbad
16. Juli – 17. August 2008

Luka Fineisen describes her intervention as follows:

'The disused indoor swimming pool in the city interests me because of its peculiar architecture. It appears strangely minimalist in the midst of the picturesque cityscape. You can tell that the building has been abandoned for years. Something eerie emanates from it. Strangely enough, the building still smells unmistakably of an indoor swimming pool, even though the steam bath, sauna and swimming pool have been lying there unused for years. It is still unclear what is to be done with the building; there have probably been various ideas that have always come to nothing. There is a foreign object with potential "future fog... uncertainty" in the sense of dilapidation as well as meaning.
The building seems to me to be composed of cubes with different surfaces. One part of the façade is red-brown with a regular pattern, next to it is a concrete and glass wall. I take up the roofed space as an equivalent cube to the built "blocks" above it. My intervention consists of surrounding this space with mist. Many nozzles, which atomize water very finely, are installed on the outside along the ceiling, which is covered with plastic planks. They produce a bright volume of tiny droplets, creating a fragile curtain.

Viewed from a distance, the mist or drizzle on a windless day is associated with a continuation of the walls down to the floor, making the building even more of a closed block. When it is windy, the mass becomes more of a veil that blows away and is constantly changing. The haze cloud is given clearly defined edges by the boundaries of the building, but is transient in itself. Depending on the wind and thermals, it changes constantly or appears as almost massive waves, which sometimes dissolve completely only to reappear as a subtle haze. If you stand in the covered area, you are surrounded by the living wall of droplets, which sometimes fills the entire covered area with a barely permeable mist. You can walk through this curtain and the resulting swathes without getting really wet; you rather feel a cool dampness. The intervention reinforces the theme of the dilapidated bathroom. The elements of air, water and light are mixed together to form a living substance that is highly transient in itself, but is constantly being produced anew. The filigree lightness of the mist contrasts with the heavy architecture. The medium of water refers to the former sensuality of the place. The dead building begins to live again in an absurd way. The entire architecture is infected by my setting. The staircase running around the building functions like a pedestal for a huge object. Depending on the weather and lighting conditions, the work takes on a different power. When it is sunny, prisms of light contrast with the dull impression of the building, sometimes wind distorts the volume of the haze and rain intensifies its sensuality. The building stands out even more from the cityscape and the installation gives it a lightness of its own.

Luka Fineisen lives and works in Cologne. She studied art at the Memphis College of Art, USA and at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in the classes of Prof. Irmin Kamp and Prof. Fritz Schwengler. Her works deal with material, its surface and expressive possibilities. These are central themes that are analyzed and worked on in sculpture in particular.