II

Örtagården
Märta Måås-Fjetterström
1928 / 1988

In the apse of HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark, the only exhibition space with a view of the surrounding landscaped city park of Graz, Poledna displays a historical loan: a hand-knotted carpet from the workshop of the Swedish textile artist Märta Måås-Fjetterström, designed in 1928. The apse, conceived as a contemplative zone, thus becomes a kind of exhibition within the exhibition. The work’s title, Örtagården, can be translated as herb garden and the patterns on the carpet do indeed resemble flowerbeds, drawn in an almost abstract geometric formal language with a strongly modernist style. The motif thus enters into a dialog with the modernist concrete architecture of both HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark and the wider built environment of the park.

On the one hand, Mathias Poledna’s placement of loaned objects within his own exhibition builds on his in-depth engagement with institutional critique and neo-conceptual strategies by reflecting on the interdependencies of institution and city and their respective spaces. At the same time, Poledna refers to the production and value of art objects: for art objects to be viable, they must be transferred and exposed in the public and social spaces of an institution – i.e. transported from the studio to the public. In both the film work, for which Poledna worked with specialists in a film studio, and with the making of a tapestry, nothing is left to chance. It is for this reason that Poledna is interested in the aspects of dealing with a highly skilled designer, such as Måås-Fjetterström.

Måås-Fjetterström is particularly known for her decorative carpets, in which she combined Nordic traditions with modernist approaches. She was one of the leading Swedish textile artists of the early 20^th century and thus a contemporary of other important protagonists of textile art and design at the time, such as the Bauhaus artist Annie Albers, and the Irish architect Eileen Gray, but also the painter Hilma af Klint. Måås-Fjetterström’s carpets and tapestries are still produced by hand by specially trained craftsmen according to her detailed specifications, contrary to the rapid implementation and effectiveness promised by new industrial techniques. At the same time, the carpet is a luxurious everyday object that, although designed by an artist, was not itself intended as an autonomous work of art, but now appears in an art museum context. The Måås-Fjetterström tapestry on display in the exhibition was hand-woven in 1988 by Birgit Svensson and Birgith Nilsson, themselves prominent textile artists in Måås-Fjetterström’s still active workshop, based on original designs.

Another level that Poledna negotiates alongside the theme of modernity are the craftsmanship of design itself. He engages not only with the conditions of production and exhibition, but also to a long history of artistic engagement with craft, form and functionality, for which Vienna has been a central location since the turn of the century. By means of his collecting, arranging and producing of references, Poledna not only borrows constantly from art, cultural and design history, but also uses selected artifacts to show how modernism is constantly present in the most diverse forms of expression.

The definition of modernism as an epoch is very contested in terms of time and dates. While some argue that it began at the threshold of the 16^th century, others argue that the era is restricted to the period between 1880 and 1920 / 30. The tapestry initially appears to be a reference to another time, which now threatens to disappear into the past. Poledna not only transfers the tapestry back to the present, he also draws a line of connection through different periods of the past: a modernist design by a Swedish textile designer from 1928, produced by hand weaving exactly fifty years later, and is finally exhibited this year at a late-modern institution.

Poledna thus bears witness to a complex, highly differentiated modernity, in this case particularly emphasizing the roles of female protagonists. This modernity cannot be reduced to a single narrative, but is and was international, multifaceted, and, above all, not yet complete: it is also contemporary in all its ruptures and distortions. As such, he places the tapestry in the overall context of the exhibition, showing how modernity constantly reappears in a multitude of varying formations and illuminating the different production conditions inherent to it, in which elaborate individual productions can run parallel to industrial mass productions.

Örtagården
Märta Måås-Fjetterström
Designed in 1928, handwoven in 1988 at Måås­-Fjetterström AB by Birgit Svensson and Birgith Nilsson, marked AB MMF
Knotted pile, wool on linen warp
79 1/2 × 118 7/8 in
# 5278 Märta Måås­-Fjetterström Archives
Private Collection