Between Three-dimensional Object and Space

Red Light District – An interior installation by Rita Rohlfing

The architecture of the Alte Rotation is a continuous challenge to artists. The former industrial space with its numerous recesses and different spatial axes has made itself felt in one way or another in all of the works of art that have been presented there. There have been exhibitions in which the two floors were separated such as in the case of the bunker-like atmosphere during the photodocumentary Dienststelle Marienthal by the Aachen-based photographer Andreas Magdanz. For his Spookrijder exhibition, Hans van Meeuwen from Cologne made the lower floor inaccessible. Suse Wiegand included the stairs in her presentation by placing fragile sculptures on the steps, making them impossible to walk on.

However, hardly another artist has intervened so radically in the architecture of the Alte Rotation as has Rita Rohlfing with her interior installation Red Light District: The two stories have disappeared.

Monumental boxes have been placed over the two otherwise open surfaces. These boxes cover both the stairs as well as the banisters. Their sides consist of aluminum plates that have been mounted onto a wooden frame. Red light is reflected into the real space through a transparent plastic sheet that has been stretched over the topside of the frame. It is not until one walks around the interior installation and examines it more closely that the different shades of red become apparent under the transparent plastic sheet. At the same time it becomes clear that it is not a direct red light, but rather perfect illusion. Nothing is as it appears to be. The perception of the work of art is relative.

The red light is produced by spotlights that shine through sheets of red plastic located below the boxes on the ground floor of the building. This vehement intrusion into the architecture of the Alte Rotation causes a shift of meaning —from „disused“ industrial space to colored space. However, one cannot discover this colored space until one becomes a part of the „red light district“—by circling the installation and becoming involved in it. Only then can the perceptual irritations be lifted: the red light that is not a red light at all and the sharp, constructed contours of the aluminum plates that dissolve in the light.

Rita Rohlfing’s interior installations move along the dividing line between sculptures and painting. Clear structures, smooth surfaces and monochrome colors characterize her works. They consist primarily of materials such as Plexiglas, metal or plastic sheeting.

However, Rita Rohlfing brings elements into her apparently simple works that irritate our perception. Her recent installations may represent actual three-dimensional objects, however they lose their clear and sharp contours through the use of mostly red, diffuse color—of elements of painting.

The prevailing conditions—the aluminum plates that lend the work a constructed, geometric character—have a determining influence on the interior installation Red Light District.

However, the diffuse, not immediately determinable lighted space dissolves this apparently sturdy and clear construction. While in her earlier interior installations Rita Rohlfing often closed off such colored spaces, in Red Light District she opens it up, allowing us to experience the space by walking around the installation.

In Red Light District, the artist’s largest interior installation to date, a tension is created between three-dimensional objects, diffuse shades of color and perception.

Katharina Chrubasik
in: RITA ROHLFING – ROTLICHTBEZIRK, Ausst.-Kat./exh. cat. Bonn, LVR-LandesMuseum Bonn, Bonn 2002, S./pp. 11–15