Motor Show
Installation, 2011
Detroit is shaped by the automobile and its industry like no other city, it is almost synonymously seen as Motor City. The car has come to represent everything from progress and desire to climate change and urban collapse, an irrational and emotionally charged metaphor much like Detroit itself: Rock City, Murder City, Renaissance City, City of Tomorrow are only a few of the names given to the city over the past four decades. The latest eruption was the media coverage during the financial crisis, in which the fate of Detroit has been portrayed as synonymous with the whole of the United States. Detroit is a dynamic place and mobility seems to be the keyword for this city. The car is omnipresent, but has lost its progressive potential. But there is a demand of new metaphors and MOTOR SHOW proposes mobility, symbolized by people overcoming obstacles. In 2005, Ingo Vetter, Annette Weisser and Mitch Cope founded the Detroit Tree of Heaven Woodshop. The Woodshop works exclusively with wood processed from the Tree of Heaven, a resource unfailing in Detroit. Also known as ghetto palm, this plant (Ailanthus altissima) populates abandoned lots and deserted factory sites all over Detroit. The wood is of poor quality by conventional standards, but the artists look at it as a post-industrial resource, and take advantage of its ubiquity. The Woodshop is set up as a loosely organized network of local specialists and develops art works and commissions for international museums and galleries. All frames, as well as other sculptural works in the exhibition, were specially produced by the Detroit Tree of Heaven Woodshop. The artworks have been produced in collaboration with Bildmuseet Umeå and Iaspis Stockholm. (I.V.)
Artist's Bio:
Visual artist with a background in sculpture, working with the relationship between the concepts of the public and of space. Ingo Vetter often works together with other artists or experts in various fields. The starting point for his works always has foundation in theory, art history and in most of the cases derive from a site-specific research and result as a sculpture, an intervention in public space or photography or combination of several media. Ingo Vetter is a professor at the Umeå Academy of Fine Arts.