Optimum
an installation by Lorenz Wanker
Optimum brings together objects, images, and spatial stagings that revolve around the question of how value, performance, and desire become materialized.
At the center of the work group are three bag-like objects made of leather and aluminum. Their forms are based on the familiar formats of commercial batteries, which have been enlarged by the factor 10. Presented on a mirrored pedestal and embedded within a display reminiscent of a luxury boutique, they appear both familiar and estranged.
The battery functions as a store, reserve, and carrier of energy. The handbag operates as a carrier of social meaning. Within these hybrid objects, both systems converge. The works move between sculpture, accessory, and commodity form. They draw on the aesthetics of the luxury sector and invoke visual languages that circulate promises of value, self-optimization, and availability.
The exhibition setting amplifies this ambiguity. Mirrors, reflective surfaces, and carefully directed sightlines create a space in which observation and self-observation collapse into one another. The objects appear desirable, yet remain curiously inaccessible. Their function is present but never fulfilled.
The installation is expanded through a photographic series, a mirror, and a watercolor painting based on an advertising still. Across different media, the works shift motifs of charging, repetition, and projection into new states. What emerges are images concerned less with use than with expectation—with what an object promises before it performs.
Optimum is interested in moments where material and symbolic economies overlap. The luxury object, the consumer good, and the artwork all share a proximity to desire. Their value does not arise solely from what they are, but from what they place in prospect.
The battery handbags condense this logic into a form that appears both absurd and plausible. They resemble relics of a present in which energy, attention, and performance have become tradable resources. What they might store remains unresolved.
At the center of the work group are three bag-like objects made of leather and aluminum. Their forms are based on the familiar formats of commercial batteries, which have been enlarged by the factor 10. Presented on a mirrored pedestal and embedded within a display reminiscent of a luxury boutique, they appear both familiar and estranged.
The battery functions as a store, reserve, and carrier of energy. The handbag operates as a carrier of social meaning. Within these hybrid objects, both systems converge. The works move between sculpture, accessory, and commodity form. They draw on the aesthetics of the luxury sector and invoke visual languages that circulate promises of value, self-optimization, and availability.
The exhibition setting amplifies this ambiguity. Mirrors, reflective surfaces, and carefully directed sightlines create a space in which observation and self-observation collapse into one another. The objects appear desirable, yet remain curiously inaccessible. Their function is present but never fulfilled.
The installation is expanded through a photographic series, a mirror, and a watercolor painting based on an advertising still. Across different media, the works shift motifs of charging, repetition, and projection into new states. What emerges are images concerned less with use than with expectation—with what an object promises before it performs.
Optimum is interested in moments where material and symbolic economies overlap. The luxury object, the consumer good, and the artwork all share a proximity to desire. Their value does not arise solely from what they are, but from what they place in prospect.
The battery handbags condense this logic into a form that appears both absurd and plausible. They resemble relics of a present in which energy, attention, and performance have become tradable resources. What they might store remains unresolved.