'Out of Office': Art at the workplace

The rubber tree, weeping fig or spider plant aren't the most demanding flora when it comes to care. A familiar sight in any office, these plants survive everywhere from glass skyscrapers to concrete factories. No matter the environment, they usually go unnoticed. Photographer Saskia Groneberg documents the contrast between wild nature and the rigid world of work in her black-and-white shots.

When wound up with a crank, the cogwheel device inside Beate Engl's man-sized pedestal, "Burnout Machine," speeds up and rotates the chair on its top. The interactive object is the artist's rendition of the stress spiral of the modern working world driven by machinery.

Matten Vogel deals with the theme of time in his work. The wall calendar above, entitled "Monate, 2016-2017," represents the days he spent working in his studio. But the rectangles, which mark individual days of the year, are not labeled with numbers or months.

Given the name of the exhibition — "Out of Office" — Lilly Lulay's piece "Sundowner at the Beach" embodies the show perfectly. The object consists of driftwood and a holiday photo that has fallen victim to a shredder. The constant desire of most people to escape the stressful work routine is mercilessly destroyed in this artwork.

Ignacio Uriarte is a professional economist who worked as an employee for large corporations for years, but now sees himself as an "office artist." In his series of 12 doodles, he elevates the everyday office scribblings that emerge during telephone conversations to minimalist art. His works are created with commercial pens used by millions of office workers.

In this piece, Thomas Neumaier radically reduced a typewriter keyboard to just a few letters, leaving only enough to spell out the word: ORDNUNG, meaning "order" in English. The simplicity of Neumaier's object summarizes the task and goal of the whole administrative apparatus.

Yellow Post-it notes are part of the basic equipment of every office. Berliner artist Denise Winter cuts rectangles into the multi-layered blocks, which become smaller with each layer, creating the impression of spatial depth. Though depth isn't usually associated with these short office notes...

Here, Dirk Krecker resorts to a technology that seems to have become obsolete in the digital era, the so-called typewriter drawing. "The old-masterly, technically perfect kind of drawing was not an option for me, but neither was its opposite, the wild, imperfect and spidery version," Krecker explained. His solution to the dilemma was a typewriter with which he produced this work.

At first glance, this work appears to be a collection of rulers. Under normal circumstances, these objects only make their way into museums as tools, for artists and gallerists. Object artist Tina Haase wanted to change that by turning these office instruments into a colorful artwork.

Standard office supplies, such as staples, files and folders, are the medium of Swiss artist Beat Zoderer. He rescues them from the office and brings them into the world of art, rearranging the objects and questioning the principles of daily office work. At the same time, he challenges the world of art, which has a certain tendency to take itself a bit too seriously.

Office workers still print out large amounts of paper that are filed away, only to eventually end up in a trash can. Imitating such acts of waste disposal, artist Florian Lechner used scrunched up paper to create a new work at the opening exhibition.