The Hearth Room
Where does artistic work begin, and where does its production end? When does an exhibition start, and when does its preparation cease? The Hearth Room. is not an exhibition where everything arrives finished; it evolves over time. What serves as a workspace today may transform into a stage tomorrow; what starts as raw material may end up as part of the installation’s architecture. For Christoph Meier and Ute Müller, their exhibition is not about displaying completed works; it is about revealing the context and conditions of production itself. In collaboration with artists and architects Stefan Guttmann, Miriam Hansen, Ruben Mahler, Andreas Olavssønn Rongen, Grischa Schmidt and Gregor Titze – alongside others who will join in the coming months – the project creates a space where material, spatial and social processes interact and shape one another.
The core material used here is clay. Malleable by hand, it absorbs pressure, retains touch and captures surfaces. Only through firing does this soft, reversible substance gain permanence. In Vienna, where Meier and Müller live and work, vast clay deposits on Wienerberg were once used to produce the bricks that built the rapidly expanding Austrian capital. By the late nineteenth century, the harsh living and working conditions of the predominantly migrant brick workers became a catalyst for Austria’s labour movement.
The hearth designates the central place of the home. The fire evokes the hearth and the kiln, conviviality and production. In the former Casino Bourgeois, this interplay takes on added significance: a space historically defined by social display is transformed into a site of collective making, use and transformation.
The Hearth Room follows no fixed script. Over its duration, shifting states and rhythms inscribe themselves into the space, turning it into a material and social archive of its own creation. This archive is not exclusive to the artists. Visitors are no mere spectators; they become part of a process whose evolution can be observed, experienced and shaped by everyone. Participation does not necessarily require any specific gesture: simply entering the space, perceiving it and using it is enough to become part of an exhibition that, over its duration, evolves with all those who take the time to linger in it..
