page_title: Via Lewandowsky
section_title: Works in Public Space
hierarchical_section_title: Via Lewandowsky / Works in Public Space
caption_attribution_description: English: Via Lewandowsky's sculpture From Behind (Doggy Style), 2006, in the permanent collection of the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, St. Louis, Missouri Deutsch: Von hinten (Doggy Style), 2006, von Via Lewandowsky in der Sammlung des Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museums, St. Louis, Missouri
context_page_description: Volker Via Lewandowsky is a German artist who works with installation, sculpture, object art, photography, performance, painting and drawing.
  Poem for an Artist
  Born in Dresden in 1963
  lost an eye at the age of three
  because of arts. Since then, a devotee.
  Ergo: unshorn no one will ever be.
  Durs Grünbein, 1997
context_section_description: Via's installations in public spaces confirm this, as do his performances, which create an awareness of the structures of historiography. In 2009 his contribution to the 20th anniversary of the Monday demonstrations in East Germany (specifically Leipzig) took the form of a confetti parade. Cannon were fired at the participants with the fusillades consisting of confetti made from miniature business cards bearing the code names and professions of thousands of the Stasi's domestic spies. Information for the business cards was acquired from documentation at the Federal Commissioner for the Stasi Records (or Birthler office) in Leipzig.
  Via Lewandowsky's public works of art cannot be reduced to any obvious political element. Von hinten (Doggy Style) [From Behind (Doggy Style): 2006], in the collection of the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum in St. Louis, Missouri, plays with absurdity and puzzle of form and content. As with many of his works, the title points at the work's inherent double entendre and hints at bigotry, thereby increasing its effect on the viewer.
  A work installed at a public site central to Germany history in Berlin is Roter Teppich [Red Carpet: 2003]. Laid out in the entrance hall of the Bendlerblock, this oversized carpet, when viewed from above, shows a war-torn Berlin and ironically refers to the military term carpet bombing. The irony is heightened by the choice of location, as the Bendler Block is currently the home of the German Federal Ministry of Defence. Roter Teppich's overlapping of various layers of comprehension and the conscious aim of misguiding his audience by constructing unclear narrative threads are characteristic qualities of Via Lewandowsky's work.
caption: Via Lewandowsky's sculpture From Behind (Doggy Style), 2006, in the permanent collection of the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, St. Louis, Missouri
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