Artist:
Christine Hill (born 1968 in Binghamton, USA; lives and works in New York City, USA and Berlin, Germany).

Materials:
Mixed media installation.

Description:
“Do-It-Yourself Bauhaus is a project by Christine Hill and Volksboutique commissioned within the exhibition Modell Bauhaus/Bauhaus: A Conceptual Model at Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin. This work is based on reviewing the core tenets of the founding of the Bauhaus with how they survive today in contemporary design. Hill does this by critiquing both Bauhaus ideas and their current dilution in mass marketing.”
—”Christine Hill, Do-It-Yourself Bauhaus,” Ronald Feldman Gallery website.

“Hill’s installation can be seen as a contemporary commentary that uses present-day artistic means to examine the extent to which “Bauhaus” influences life today, and the extent to which the Bauhaus as part of the high-and-low culture as well as of everyday living is subject to the widest variety of interpretations or “appropriations.” Christine Hill’s main concern is the fundamental idea of the Bauhaus, which first and foremost included a cultural as well as a political and social dimension. Today however—according to the artist—this aspect has been largely forgotten or has receded into the background. Nowadays the Bauhaus is primarily linked with practical, functional, high-quality conception, simple and elegant, sometimes also elitist or luxurious, with reference to the development of design or architecture. Yet a crucial maxim of the Bauhaus under its second director Hannes Meyer was: “The needs of the people, not the dictates of luxury.” Satisfying the dictates of luxury instead of providing a modern framework for the social environment, as promised in the Bauhaus manifesto: that was the conflict the historical Bauhaus itself already found itself constantly facing. And that contradiction seems to live on uninterrupted in the classic products or architectural imitations. The trivialisation of the Bauhaus idea ultimately went hand in hand with the commercialization of Bauhaus objects or Bauhaus architecture. That is exactly Christine Hill’s point of departure when she sets out to question, classify or ironically diffract this development with her installation, on the basis of current examples, against the background of the current Bauhaus anniversary celebrations.”
—Press release, “Christine Hill, Do-It-Yourself Bauhaus,” Galerie EIGEN + ART website.