(Outdoor) Exhibition
The Stand Ins
9 – 12 October 2025
Conceptual Biennale
Dong Xuan Centre, Lichtenberg, Berlin
These are not the original works, not the “real” objects, but stand-ins: props, copies, echoes. Rather than awaiting activation, perhaps they are performing in their own quiet way? Staged outdoors, at the spatially ambiguous site of the tower in Lichtenberg, Berlin, in the Dong Xuan Centre—where commerce meets community and industrial functionality brushes up against cultural entanglement—this part of the exhibition embraces sculpture that becomes backdrop and object that turns into image. Each of these seven works is translated into a 2D representation, scaled up or down from its original size. In doing so, they question objecthood and the authority of presence. They become stand-ins for the lives we imagine through objects, for the characters we enact around them. They are props for identities rehearsed but never fully staged. These works are actors, collectively standing in for a visual experience and the original promise of utility, meaning and emotion. They echo a world of lived gestures—waiting, sitting, talking, tooling, feeling, drinking, desiring and living—now silently performing those gestures in a suspended and conceptual form. Rather than assert their materiality, these artworks propose roles.
Andrea Zittel – Living Unit, 1993
A compact modular structure, originally designed to condense all the necessities of daily life , it stands in for autonomy, self-sufficiency, the minimalist ideal of living. In this flattened version, the bed-platform, sink, shelving and fold-out compartments are rendered as a crisp visual diagram, a colorful architectural elevation turned theatrical façade.
Billie Clarken – Smoking Signals, 2017
Originally a hybrid between paradoxical methods of advertising and poetic messaging, it stands in for communication, desire and consumer identity. Cowboys promote cigarettes so companies use cowboys to sell the image of America. Clarken’s work resembles a bus stop, yet one that suggests waiting without destination. We are not invited to board, only to imagine what we might be performing or escaping from.
Camille Henrot – Bad Dad & Beyond, 2015
A familiar object, the telephone booth ,turns into a layered exploration of emotional complexity, authority and communication breakdown. Originally an interactive sculpture for authoritative language used in hotlines, this work stands-in to themes central to Henrot’s work: the failure of connection, the fragmentation of meaning, and the incomplete transmission of emotion—not just between people, but now between viewer and image.
Jing He – Tulip Pyramid, 2017
Inspired by the Dutch 17th-century ceramic tulip vases, this stacked form is part historical artifact, part contemporary intervention exploring the construction of China’s new design identity. Jing He invited a group of contemporaries to co-design layers of a new Tulip Pyramid with varied materials, developing a collective production methodology. Its 2D version exaggerates a cultural symbol paused between admiration and critique.
Sophie Jung – Nahcis, 2020
A tangle of found materials, parts of mannequins, straps, text fragments, Jung’s assemblages often defy clear reading. Once a designer chair, then a sculpture that resembles a fragmented character. In two dimensions it stands in for a frozen gesture—part-throne, part-sculptural aside—suggesting the detail of a herring once occupied attention, asking the viewer to consider what authority or comfort the chair may have once supported.
Ursula Sax – Looping, 1987
Conceived as a giant ribbon of colored tubular steel at Messe Berlin, this work channels movement, flow and air. Originally 19 m high and 50 m wide, it is the largest sculpture in the city. Flattened into a vibrant graphic curve, it resembles a scribble enticing you to trace it with your eyes. Even without volume, it pulls you in, like the ghost of a twirl.
Valentina Cameranesi – Cigni, 2024
A delicate, deco-inspired swan once made as an idea of a drinking vessel made of glass now stretches the neck in profile like a silhouette from a vintage puppet show. The form is reduced to elegant outlines, flattened but still impossibly graceful. Cigni becomes a theatrical flourish: standing in for a dream opera, poised mid-bow, mid-gesture.
Together, they ask: If these works stand in for something what do you see?
Images:
1) Robert Damisch for Conceptual Biennale
2) Matylda Krzykowski
3) Sven Durst