CLIENT: MAK – Museum of Applied Arts Cologne
Design Gruppe Pentagon
January 13th – June 14th 2020
The Museum für Angewandte Kunst is dedicating its first monographic exhibition to the collective with “Design Gruppe Pentagon”. Founded in 1985 by Gerd Arens, Wolfgang Laubersheimer, Reinhard Müller, Ralph Sommer, and Meyer Voggenreiter, the members quickly became protagonists of New German Design. They combined materials such as steel and plexiglass not only with stone, rubber and leather, but also with everyday objects. In 1987, the collective was part of documenta 8 and at the Biennale in São Paulo with the project “Café Casino”.
In the central exhibition hall of the MAK, the group’s furniture is presented in a space-consuming installation. The works are positioned in front of a huge projection surface. A film collage can be seen on it, which reflects on the 1980s and thus places the works in a historical context.
235 Media produced an almost borderless projection surface 17 m wide and 5.2 m high for this purpose, which was installed behind the podium with the staged design objects and pieces of furniture. The 90 square meters projection surface was fed by two 15,000 ANSI lumen projectors using the softedge method and a video server as feed. The projection was adapted using mapping technology in such a way that the pieces of furniture staged on the podium were cut out of the projection and could not cast any shadows.