III

Untitled (circa 1963 –– 1972)
2022

Entering HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark’s basement, an essential aspect of modernity is illuminated: car production. Based on economic systems such as Taylorism, Fordism, car production of course also depended on oil production and the burning of fossil fuels. This industry forms a direct contrast to Måås-Fjetterström’s tapestry in terms of its manufacturing mechanisms and the far-reaching consequences it entails in relation to all questions of modern life’s regulation, as well as to ideas around biopolitics, governmentality, and concrete spatial impacts on the built environment. In short, it can be thought of as one of or even the most essential characteristic of modernity and the modern era. This is also the case with the factory architecture, which, like that of prisons, gave rise to further instruments of modernity, including the panopticon and the surveillance associated with it, which enabled a supervisor to see the workers without being seen themselves.

So if those tools of modernity and the grid (such as the ceiling in the HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark) are some of the original symbols of (early) modern space itself, then the car is the product and symbol par excellence of late modernism, especially after the Second World War. The automobile was also highly relevant from a cinematographic point of view and it is impossible to imagine post-war films without it. The same applies to the emergence of the cinema industry, which was highly influenced by the development of rationalized work management (Taylorisation), as well as by technologies such as phonography and chronophotography. Not only did these technologies work together, they also contributed to their mutual perception. Cinema made the cars even more visible and the car shaped cinematic, introducing a faster pace of storytelling which characterized films from then on.

The series of photographic works in the basement relies on industrial photographs from the Cold War era; specifically, a careful selection of historical images from the archive of an Italian car manufacturer that document various locations and phases of the car manufacturing production in the 1950s and 1960s including engine casting, component assembly, painting, finishing and final quality control. The images were used for technical descriptions, instructions and manuals, and have recently been republished in a number of books for car enthusiasts and classic car lovers. However, they also include image-based works of archive material showing the use of finished cars and the variations of individual models, for example in front of a modernist hotel. Their iconography is essentially reminiscent of the visual traditions of earlier modernism, such as Bauhaus and New Objectivity (Neue Sachlichkeit).

Questions of design also seem to play a pivotal role in this series, because while the tapestry is unequivocally a luxury product intended for a more exclusive audience, the automobile production of the 1960s and 1970s on both sides of the Iron Curtain was accompanied by the idea of luxury for all, intended to satisfy the masses with consciously applied modern designs. The post-war economic boom associated with Fordism, – although an Italian factory based on the US model is depicted here – or concepts such as the social market economy, also brought forth promises associated with modernity, such as growing prosperity that would gradually reach everyone and thus also inaugurated ideas of consumption that were only possible if the working population also had enough free time to consume and relax. As we now know, these hopes have never been fully realized.

Poledna is interested in both the materiality as well as the visual regimes that surround everyday and exclusive objects. He uses the tapestry and the photo series to illuminate various conditions of production, highlighting contrasts and parallels within modernity and, by extension, within the (late) capitalist system, and the impacts of these on the lives of individuals.


Untitled
Mathias Poledna, 2022
Vintage Michelin tube
5.50 / 5.75 / 6.00 / 6.4 – 16
Original wrapping, new old stock
27 3/16 × 27 3/16 × 4 3/4 in
Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Buchholz, Cologne/​Berlin/​New York

Untitled (circa 1963 – 1972)
Mathias Poledna, 2022
Archival pigment print on paper
7 15/16 × 9 1/16 in unframed
19 × 20 7/8 × 7/8 in framed
Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Buchholz, Cologne/​Berlin/​New York

Untitled (circa 1963 – 1972)
Mathias Poledna, 2022
Archival pigment print on paper
8 1/2 × 8 1/2 in unframed
20 7/8 × 19 × 7/8 in framed
Haubrok Foundation, Berlin

Untitled (circa 1963 – 1972)
Mathias Poledna, 2022
Archival pigment print on paper
7 15/16 × 9 1/16 in unframed
19 × 20 7/8 × 7/8 in framed
Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Buchholz, Cologne/​Berlin/​New York

Untitled (circa 1963 – 1972)
Mathias Poledna, 2022
Archival pigment print on paper
7 15/16 × 9 1/16 in unframed
19 × 20 7/8 × 7/8 in framed
Haubrok Foundation, Berlin

Untitled (circa 1963 – 1972)
Mathias Poledna, 2022
Archival pigment print on paper
7 15/16 × 9 1/16 in unframed
19 × 20 7/8 × 7/8 in framed
Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Buchholz, Cologne/​Berlin/​New York

Untitled (circa 1963 – 1972)
Mathias Poledna, 2022
Archival pigment print on paper
7 15/16 × 9 1/16 in unframed
19 × 20 7/8 × 7/8 in framed
Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Buchholz, Cologne/​Berlin/​New York

Untitled (circa 1963 – 1972)
Mathias Poledna, 2022
Archival pigment print on paper
8 1/2 × 8 1/2 in unframed
20 7/8 × 19 × 7/8 in framed
Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Buchholz, Cologne/​Berlin/​New York

Untitled (circa 1963 – 1972)
Mathias Poledna, 2022
Archival pigment print on paper
7 15/16 × 9 1/16 in unframed
19 × 20 7/8 × 7/8 in framed
Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Buchholz, Cologne/​Berlin/​New York

Untitled (circa 1963 – 1972)
Mathias Poledna, 2022
Archival pigment print on paper
7 15/16 × 9 1/16 in unframed
19 × 20 7/8 × 7/8 in framed
Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Buchholz, Cologne / Berlin / New York

Untitled (circa 1963 – 1972)
Mathias Poledna, 2022
Archival pigment print on paper
8 1/2 × 8 1/2 in unframed
20 7/8 × 19 × 7/8 in framed
Haubrok Foundation, Berlin

Untitled (circa 1963 – 1972)
Mathias Poledna, 2022
Archival pigment print on paper
7 15/16 × 9 1/16 in unframed
19 × 20 7/8 × 7/8 in framed
Haubrok Foundation, Berlin

Untitled (circa 1963 – 1972)
Mathias Poledna, 2022
Archival pigment print on paper
7 15/16 × 9 1/16 in unframed
19 × 20 7/8 × 7/8 in framed
Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Buchholz, Cologne/​Berlin/​New York

Untitled (circa 1963 – 1972)
Mathias Poledna, 2022
Archival pigment print on paper
9 1/16 × 7 15/16 in unframed
20 7/8 × 19 × 7/8 in framed
Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Buchholz, Cologne/​Berlin/​New York 

Untitled (circa 1963 – 1972)
Mathias Poledna, 2022
Archival pigment print on paper
9 1/16 × 7 15/16 in unframed
20 7/8 × 19 × 7/8 in framed
Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Buchholz, Cologne/​Berlin/​New York 

Untitled (circa 1963 – 1972)
Mathias Poledna, 2022
Archival pigment print on paper
8 1/2 × 8 1/2 in unframed
20 7/8 × 19 × 7/8 in framed
Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Buchholz, Cologne/​Berlin/​New York 

Untitled (circa 1963 – 1972)
Mathias Poledna, 2022
Archival pigment print on paper
9 1/16 × 7 15/16 in unframed
20 7/8 × 19 × 7/8 in framed
Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Buchholz, Cologne/​Berlin/​New York 

Untitled (circa 1963 – 1972)
Mathias Poledna, 2022
Archival pigment print on paper
9 1/16 × 7 15/16 in unframed
20 7/8 × 19 × 7/8 in framed
Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Buchholz, Cologne/​Berlin/​New York