Visual impact: Rehberger comes together at Galleria illy

by Ariella Risch | Sep 07, 2010 in illywords news | Leave A Comment

I experienced firsthand the installation of Galleria illy at KaDeWe in Berlin… an intense few days! The temporary space is installed in the department store’s great hall, which normally gives the visitor/shopper a sense of openness and a range of choices, all of which lead out – do I go check out the hypnotically fragrant perfumes? Or up the moving staircase to womens’ clothing?

As I saw Rehberger’s space take form in this hall, I no longer wanted to move away from it. The colours seemed to enter into me – the orange, the fluorescent green, the black and white that put me in a trance… The furniture was moved in and the artist himself arrived to help decide the perfect location of each chair – a kind of game in which we had to line up orange chairs with orange stripes, green stripes with green seating. (Although later we discovered that people tend to move the chairs around in the space!)

As they took the protective plastic off the pavement, I breathed a sigh of relief: I finally understood the space in all its beauty and visual impact. At the press conference during which the design for this space were presented, Tobias Rehberger had said “This work allows people to enter into my art, to immerge themselves in the colours.” And now it is true; it’s exactly as planned.

Opening night was September 2^nd and by 8:30pm everyone was there… and I mean everyone! The ambassador of Italy, business magnates, CEOs of major italian brands, actors, collectors and of course members of the illy family (you’ve seen the welcome video from Andrea Illy, right?). Everyone seemed rather at ease in Rehberger’s camouflage. The flash of the red-carpet photographers reflected in the big mirrors that wrapped the columns of the space… in fact, I think these mirrors are one of the most surprising elements of the work thanks to the way light is reflected in them and seems to dance around the space.

The light was fabulous again the next morning when KaDeWe opened its doors too the thousands of shoppers who enter each day. And I have to think that Galleria illy is a rare occasion in which contemporary art and society encounter one another in a natural way, permitting a large number of people to enter into an artistic experience. New inroads in art.

Photos from opening night: