Relax

Christoph Meier, Ute Müller, Robert Schwarz, Lukas Stopczynski

Over the years Christoph Meier, Ute Müller, Robert Schwarz, and Lukas Stopczynski have been creating to-scale, site-specific variations on the legendary architectural icon the Loos American Bar (also known as the Kärntner Bar and the American Bar), in various locations and using a range of materials. The bar, designed by Adolf Loos in 1907/08, is located in Vienna’s 1st district, and measures only 27.36 m2.

18.1.2022—6.3.2022

MAK Direktion

From episode to episode, the artists have broadened their repertoire of cross references and levels of abstraction pertaining to the Loos Bar’s interior, rendered almost infinitely expandable by its mirrored walls. RELAX takes the Loos Bar’s façade as point of departure: three beverage vending machines replace the three doorways of the well-known entrance portal, quoting the original façade to scale.

The lively atmosphere of the bar as social site and temporary counter-universe has almost completely disappeared or has been moved outside since the pandemic. The portal is transformed into a transit zone conjuring up a dystopian scenario: a bar without barkeepers, without guests or music, and nowhere to sit down. The self-service machines are the final link to the bar’s original function. The architecture is that of a transit zone, and interaction is reduced to that between human and machine.

The automats’ acoustically cranked up refrigeration units form an omnipresent body of sound in the otherwise deserted interior, cited only by a ceiling illuminated by fluorescent tubes with infinite mirroring. Every time a visitor uses one of the vending machines, the sound and lighting effects are intensified throughout the space, recalling the atmosphere of bar life in pre-pandemic times. Besides takeaway cocktails, bottle miniatures, and a special brand of American beer, the machines also dispense limited artists’ editions: a RELAX cigarette lighter, bar souvenirs such as ashtrays made of melted beer cans, and mixtapes from earlier Loos Bar projects.

The RELAX intervention is the first project in the former MAK Director’s Office that is now reopened to the public for exhibitions and events.

Curators: Marlies Wirth, Curator, Digital Culture and MAK Design Collection; Antje Prisker, Assistant to the General Director/Special Projects

Historical Allusions—a Façade without a Bar?

The mirrored ceiling is a relic from the LAX BAR, that the artists created in 2019 as part of Wiener Festwochen in a former record store in the Laxenburger Straße. It corresponds exactly to the dimensions of the Loos Bar’s interior and was displayed as motif for the exhibition poster in the MAK Columned Main Hall.

A historical photograph inspired this whole concept: the striking entrance portal with its three glass doors and projecting glass prism with the American flag was reconstructed in the 1980s according to the original plan and displayed in the MAK Columned Main Hall before being reattached to the Loos Bar’s façade.

The RELAX installation complements the two architectural fragments, creating a dematerialized space, closing the conceptual circle between reconstruction, copy, and variation of the Loos Bar, culminating in its complete deconstruction.

Loos Bar—Los Angeles, Brussels, Vienna

Christoph Meier, Ute Müller, Robert Schwarz, and Lukas Stopczynski developed the idea for their project series on the Loos Bar in 2015 during their residency at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture in Los Angeles as Schindler scholarship holders. For the LOS BAR, they built a smaller-scale version of the Vienna Loos Bar, using cheap DIY materials, in a garage of the Mackey Apartments of Rudolph M. Schindler, one of Adolf Loos’s pupils, and ran it as an artists’ bar.

In the 2017 STROOKOFFER project in Brussels, they reconstructed the interior of the Loos Bar out of straw mats and used it for performances—an allusion to the “Strohkoffer” [Straw Suitcase], an exhibition room that existed below the Loos Bar in the fifties.

In 2019, they developed the third version, titled LAX BAR. This was an even more abstract space: tiled in white from floor to ceiling and with a mirrored neon ceiling alluding to the infinite mirroring of the original bar, this version’s minimalistic patterning represented a negation not only of Loosian opulence but also of any connection whatsoever to the outside world.

Premium sound by Wolfgang Sauter, Pro Performance

Kindly supported by Easy Vending

Christoph Meier, Ute Müller, Robert Schwarz, Lukas Stopczynski, LAX BAR, 2019, Wiener Festwochen, Courtesy the artists

Christoph Meier, Ute Müller, Robert Schwarz, Lukas Stopczynski, STROOKOFFER, 2017, Exhibition view, Établissement d’en face, Brussels

Andreas Bauer, Christoph Meier, Robert Schwarz, Lukas Stopczynski, and friends, LOS BAR, 2015 Exhibition view, Mackey Apartments, MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Los Angeles

Hermann Czech, Reconstruction of the original portal of the Loos Bar, Exhibition view of Viennese Construction Sites: Forgotten Dreams—Applied Programs, MAK Columned Main Hall, 1986

View of the Loos Bar before reconstruction and renovation of the portal sign, Viennese Construction Sites: Forgotten Dreams—Applied Programs, ed. Peter Noever/MAK, Wien 1986

EXCLUSIVE

Tuesday, 1 March 2022, 6:30–7:30 p.m.
CANTUS NOVUS WIEN live
Artistic Director: Thomas Holmes
www.cantusnovuswien.at

On the last Tuesday evening of the exhibition, the space intervention RELAX by Christoph Meier, Ute Müller, Robert Schwarz, and Lukas Stopczynski in the MAK DIREKTION will once again become a place for performance and music that will radiate throughout the museum. The installation, conceived of as social sculpture, can now only be viewed in the MAK next week until 6 March 2022.

The performance series will be concluded by the performance of the CANTUS NOVUS WIEN choir in the RELAX Foyer of the MAK Columned Main Hall. In close coordination with the artists from RELAX, a capella choral works by Anton Bruckner, Josef Gabriel Rheinberger, Max Reger, and Johann Sebastian Bach/ Knut Nystedt will enter into a relationship with the space intervention and celebrate the festive end of RELAX.

The choir, headed since 2001 by Thomas Holmes, with its broad stylistic range extending from oratorical works and requiems through Romantic choral literature to contemporary music, will perform at various places in the Main Columned Hall. Using their special acoustic quality as a body of sound, CANTUS NOVUS WIEN hopes to make the music a special sound experience in the space.

Special Artist Edition:

In addition to drinks, the artist edition of ashtrays cast from aluminum cans, inspired by the earlier furnishing of the Loos bar, will be available in the vending machines of the installation!

Media

<BODY><div>Christoph Meier, Ute Müller, Robert Schwarz, Lukas Stopczynski, RELAX, 2022</div><div>MAK Columned Main Hall</div><div>© Gregor Titze/MAK </div></BODY>

Christoph Meier, Ute Müller, Robert Schwarz, Lukas Stopczynski, RELAX, 2022 © Gregor Titze/MAK

<BODY><div>Christoph Meier, Ute Müller, Robert Schwarz, Lukas Stopczynski, LAX BAR, 2019</div><div>Vienna Festival</div><div>Courtesy the artists</div><div>© Ute Müller</div></BODY>

Christoph Meier, Ute Müller, Robert Schwarz, Lukas Stopczynski, LAX BAR, 2019, Wiener Festwochen, Courtesy the artists © Ute Müller

<BODY><div><div>Christoph Meier, Ute Müller, Robert Schwarz, Lukas Stopczynski, STROOKOFFER, 2017</div><div>Exhibition view, Établissement d’en face, Brussels</div><div>© Christoph Meier, Ute Müller, Robert Schwarz, Lukas Stopczynski</div></div><br /></BODY>

Christoph Meier, Ute Müller, Robert Schwarz, Lukas Stopczynski, STROOKOFFER, 2017, Exhibition view, Établissement d’en face, Brussels © Christoph Meier, Ute Müller, Robert Schwarz, Lukas Stopczynski

<BODY><div><div><div>Andreas Bauer, Christoph Meier, Robert Schwarz, Lukas Stopczynski, and friends, LOS BAR, 2015</div><div>Exhibition view, Mackey Apartments, MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Los Angeles</div><div>© Los Bar, 2015</div></div></div><br /></BODY>

Andreas Bauer, Christoph Meier, Robert Schwarz, Lukas Stopczynski, and friends, LOS BAR, 2015 Exhibition view, Mackey Apartments, MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Los Angeles © Los Bar, 2015

<BODY><div>Hermann Czech, Reconstruction of the original portal of the Loos Bar, Exhibition view of Viennese Construction Sites: Forgotten Dreams—Applied Programs, MAK Columned Main Hall, 1986</div><div>© Hermann Czech/MAK</div></BODY>

Hermann Czech, Reconstruction of the original portal of the Loos Bar, Exhibition view of Viennese Construction Sites: Forgotten Dreams—Applied Programs, MAK Columned Main Hall, 1986 © Hermann Czech/MAK

<BODY><div>View of the Loos Bar before reconstruction and renovation of the portal sign</div><div>Viennese Construction Sites: Forgotten Dreams—Applied Programs, ed. Peter Noever/MAK, Wien 1986</div></BODY>

View of the Loos Bar before reconstruction and renovation of the portal sign, Viennese Construction Sites: Forgotten Dreams—Applied Programs, ed. Peter Noever/MAK, Wien 1986 © false

<BODY><div>Exhibition view, RELAX, 2022</div><div>Christoph Meier, Ute Müller, Robert Schwarz, Lukas Stopczynski</div><div>© Gregor Titze/MAK</div></BODY>

Exhibitions

Los Bar

MAK Center Los Angeles