Andreas Siekmann

A colorful merry-go-round spins counterclockwise around a statue of a horse and rider in the middle of a public square. Andreas Siekmann realized this peculiar spectacle—in which the horse inevitably evokes its carousel counterparts, and the warrior on its back a cheery child—in 2002 on Brussels’s Place Royale. Subsequently rejected for installation in Dresden, the project is now documented in the gallery with a model and relics of the carousel, a slideshow, hexagonal computer print-outs, and photographic and textual elements. Conceptually (and literally), the project revolves around Siekmann’s idea that, in addition to the three traditional branches of state power—legislative, executive, and judicial—there is a fourth, the “exclusive.” For Siekmann, the exclusive is the power to create zones, such as deportation centers, in which basic human rights are suspended. Thus instead of horses, the carousel features cut-out human figures that represent victims as well as enactors of this fourth power, while signage on its roof says DE EXCLUSIEV in large letters. The hexagonal print-outs of obsessively detailed, digitally “painted” images provide views of exclusive areas all over the world (e.g., sweatshops in the Philippines, immigration facilities in Germany). With a fusion of documentary strategies, painting, and public intervention, Siekmann succeeds in presenting his political analysis in the form of an illustrious theatrum mundi.