flowpole

Georg Elben at the opening on 28 February 2015 

The title flowpole, both associative and enigmatic, is an artificial word since no such noun exists. Does it help at all to conjure up a translation of this image as a cascade of rods? I will get back to the movement of the light, its flux, but first of all a precise analysis of the physical givens are necessary for understanding. The installation flowpole that Martin Pfeifle conceived for the Fuhrwerkswaage in Cologne is made up of 130 weatherproof fluorescent tubes that have been mounted on the same wall inside and outside, a wall that faces the parking lot and the “S-Bahn” train line #16. The train station at Sürth (a Cologne suburb) is located directly across from Fuhrwerkswaage. Every day around 13,000 passengers seated in their compartments stop at this station and wait briefly for the train to continue to Cologne or to Bonn. Which means that in the nine-week presentation of flowpole, over 500,000 passengers will have had the possibility to be its viewers. 

The installation is mounted on the exhibition room’s broad back wall that is 45 centimeters thick and, in itself, already a massive spatial structure, one that is between the open-to-the-public space outside and the white-cube atmosphere inside, like the filling of a sandwich. The domineering white neon tubes are 120cm long and each 36-watt bright. Thus the house of exhibition shines far and wide into the night—from 5 to 11 pm while, inside, the viewer is virtually dazzled as soon as s/he enters the room. The arrangement of the neon tubes resembles a graphic design; the angle at which they are attached has been exactly and mathematically calculated. On my first visit, I wondered why, from outside, the fluorescence first begins at a roughly one-meter height when, as is immediately discernible, it is meant to be an all-over. Inside, the reason becomes instantly clear, for Martin Pfeiffle took as his measure the dimensions of the interior wall, which starts a meter above the outside ground level: thus, 6 meters high and 15.60 meters wide. The two vertical rows of neon tubes, which mark the shift in the mirror axis from the image’s center that alludes to the golden section, are mounted directly above the floor. With an increase in the slant of the vertical rows, this distance to the floor also grows, so that the upper ends of the tubes form a straight line across.

Seen up close, the graphic impact is decisively characterized by the playful wiring, whose black-coated cables are from a distance hardly noticeable against the reddish brick façade outside, but, inside, produce a black-and-white graphic pattern. The electric current for each of the five rows comes from one connection, so that the fluorescent tubes are serially connected. From abov, the cables lead into the neon’s waterproof metal backing, so conducting the electricity from below to the next row in an elegant arc upwards. The cables’ length is thus and always the same so that the row’s bottom stationary point always lies at the same height. For which reason the cables are also much longer at their mirror axis since it is here that the direction changes and they slant to the right or to the left. Here each of these two tubes is connected from above, which causes the cable of the bottom row, whose light almost touches the floor, to curl. 

The formal description could be further refined, but even now it becomes clear that flowpole constitutes a much more complex affair than it seemed at first sight. The installation began as a series of postulations related to the architectural givens of the almost one hundred square-meter inner wall, from which the outside wall derives its appearance. But does a precise description of all these details sufficiently plumb the entire work? Surely not. And the visitor detects this quite intuitively when s/he looks into the glaring fluorescence for a certain time. Light as material, as an artistic means of formulation, is not new. And when we search for an art-historical forefather behind Pfeifle’s work, the name of Dan Flavin comes quickly to mind. However the differences in their artistic intentions are obvious. While Flavin sought abstract geometric forms that were close to Minimal Art, Pfeifle finds pleasure in converting a concept into suitable material, out of wood or even out of light rods. Flowpole’s light flickers, it pulses, it is alive. And thus what is described here is not a technical insufficiency but a central component of the work. It conjures up a shimmer like a distant view of a scene above hot asphalt or a desert. My first brief thought was of a fata morgana. It seemed inexplicable to me that such vivacity and wavy movement could radiate from what is actually a stable light source, particularly since this phenomenon is not visible from a distance.

A closer examination of the details reveals ever more irregularities that have little to do with the human installation of the work, but with the serial product of industrially fabricated neon tubes. And please don’t now claim that it’s quite clear that these tubes will naturally flicker; it couldn’t be otherwise because of the structural principle in the way the starter functions. It’s clear that my observation is easy to explain technically; I am not a physicist and only rudimentarily understand how the regular discharge of gas in a sealed glass tube generates relatively energy-wise light. It may thus be that I am fascinated by my observation that, when romantically and scientifically seen, can be classified as effusive cluelessness. But so it is with the notoriously clichéd sunset, whose explanation in the terms that physics provides is likewise quite simple: sunlight falls through an atmosphere that is contaminated with dust and smoke. But when I see it, for example, on a Mediterranean beach, I find it absolutely smashing. 

The impression vis-à-vis or within Martin Pfeifle’s installation is, however, different. As a viewer I am ever aware that the movement of the light, its flicker and the slight dizziness that it produces is something conjured up by manmade mechanical objects. Granted, the natural phenomenon of sunlight and its nightly disappearance evokes sentimental feelings, and such emotions that are called up by artificial products are of a more physical nature than a deception. Nonetheless the consistency of the serial production has its limits, and from these Pfeifle’s work draws some of its vitality: Not all the lamps light up evenly; several are simply somewhat weaker or, over the course of time, begin to flutter. In addition, the 45cm-thick wall has not been evenly built, neither inside nor out. From outside there are two barred windows upper left under the roof—inside on the upper right—across which the fluorescent lighting is mounted while it also traverses the sign with the blue-white words FUHRWERKSWAAGE KUNSTRAUM against an orange-red ground. Other former windows have long been walled in, which is clearly visible from outside by way of the areas of newer and lighter-colored reddish bricks. 

The impression of a graphic pattern remains, recalling the exact alignment of iron dust when a magnetic field is laid out, or that looks like the emblem of an outgoing span of rays. Is flowpole then an abstract symbol of the sun; though bound by the wall’s limits, is the idea of it infinitely expandable upwards and sideways into space? Though not downwards; the vanishing point of all the lines lies at the mirror axis only a few meters below the given base line. The small multiple of Plexiglas that Martin Pfeifle designed for the exhibition takes up this idea and translates it into infinitely wide-ranging light flashes in this image of an irregular fan-like radiance. The light beams paint elegant mirrored lines on the cars parked en face. When leafing through the lovely catalogue, anyone could very well get the impression that these deflections and deformations were the actual latent objective of the artist Martin Pfeifle.

Translation from German: Jeanne Haunschild