With Park by POCO , Gregor Hildebrandt presents a new body of work that builds upon his
engagement with the material traces of cultural memory. The exhibition takes the garden as
both a point of departure and a conceptual framework: a space of growth, transformation,
accumulation, and renewal. When one thinks of a garden, countless literary heroes and
heroines come to mind who explored it as such a metaphor: from Adam and Eve to Blixa
Bargeld, or, less obviously, Candide. Hildebrandt is less interested in cultivating physical
gardens than in cultivating the gardens of the soul – music, books, and film – excavating his
references from obscurity.
In the background of Park by POCO is Martin Šulík’s film The Garden , whose physical
remains become the material foundation of the exhibition. It fills the walls and windows of
the gallery, transformed into a sanctuary of its own by Hildebrandt, rendered as illegible as
possible through processes of destruction and reconstruction. Indeed, a VHS tape can hardly
hope for a more meaningful afterlife than being ripped apart in Hildebrandt’s studio.
Although the contents of this recorded cultural memory are less significant for Hildebrandt
than their very existence, the garden remains a fitting allegory for his treatment of analog
media: a practice of tending, cultivating, and transforming what would otherwise decay and
disappear. Further into the gallery, a vinyl shelter emerges within a shield of inaudible sound
in the form of an expansive, site-specific bar installation, where visitors are invited to gather.
Every garden accumulates traces of what passes through it: desired and undesired, useful
and useless, beautiful and ugly. In the same way, Hildebrandt’s works become repositories
of potential and meaning, storing their contents much like tapes, cassettes, paintings, and
sculptures. Like his raw material, the garden grows through attention and care, filling itself
with familiar inhabitants – apples, philosophers, and musicians.
Yet such a retreat is nowhere to be found in Wedding’s Soldiner Kiez, where Hildebrandt’s
studio is located. Visitors first encounter a far more mundane question: where to find a
parking space. The answer is POCO. A parking lot may seem like an unlikely landscape in
contrast to a blooming garden evoking art’s intangible riches. From Rousseau to Joni
Mitchell, many have lamented the loss of beauty paved over by civilization. They all arrive at a
similar conclusion: that the mystical place we seek is ultimately within us. For Hildebrandt, it
is in the reality of his material and its traces.