The Decline of the Showpieces
Grazer Kunstverein
7 December 2017 – 18 February 2018

While walking through Graz one day, Vasiljeva encountered an enormous boarded up sixteenth century building on Kaiser Franz Josef Kai. Drawn to the heavy door and window grates that shield the interior from the gaze of passersby, she began to imagine a group of sculptural forms that would neither conceal nor fully reveal themselves. The resulting works hover at the edge of recognition. They resemble familiar structures yet resist committing to a stable identity.

The exhibition takes its title, The Decline of the Showpieces, from a newspaper article discovered during the artist’s search through the city archives titled Der Verfall der Prunkstücke. The article described a recurring dilemma surrounding protected historical buildings. Structures recognised as monuments can often only be restored according to strict historical criteria, while contemporary renovation risks compromising their protected status. Caught within this legal and administrative tension, many buildings are left suspended between preservation and transformation, gradually falling into neglect.

Vasiljeva’s encounter with the building on Kaiser Franz Josef Kai became a point of departure for reflecting on this condition. The works approach architectural decline not simply as loss, but as a visible trace of social and institutional processes that determine how cultural heritage is maintained, forgotten and allowed to erode.

For the Winter Season at Grazer Kunstverein, the artist presents a constellation of recent and newly produced works arranged as a sequence of imaginary thresholds. One of the works is placed in the window of the very house that first inspired the project, where it remains visible from the street at 36 Kaiser Franz Josef Kai.

Responding to the idea of fading showpieces, Vasiljeva also created a carefully crafted bed to house the personal library of Elisabeth Printschitz (1952–1993), former artistic director of Grazer Kunstverein from 1987 to 1993. The bed can be transformed into a kiosk and was gifted by the artist to the institution, where it now remains as a permanent element within its interior.

Photography by Christine Winkler