Marianne Vitale's Railroad Readymades at Contemporary Fine Art Berlin During Frieze Week
During Frieze Week in 2016, Marianne Vitale presented an exhibition at Contemporary Fine Art in Berlin. The show featured her transformation of industrial railroad components known as 'common crossings' or 'frogs' into vertical sculptures. These heavy steel switches, typically laid horizontally to guide trains between tracks, were rotated ninety degrees to stand upright. Vitale's intervention draws a direct parallel to Marcel Duchamp's seminal 1917 readymade, Fountain, which similarly reoriented a mundane urinal. The artist's minimal alteration of these massive, functional objects—merely changing their orientation—forces a confrontation with their material presence and industrial history within the gallery context. The work highlights how a slight conceptual shift can imbue banal, manufactured artifacts with new aesthetic and affective power. The exhibition was noted as a highlight of the Frieze Week programming by artcritical.
Key facts
- Marianne Vitale exhibited work at Contemporary Fine Art in Berlin.
- The exhibition occurred during Frieze Week in 2016.
- The artworks are transformed railroad switches called 'common crossings' or 'frogs'.
- Vitale rotated the industrial components from horizontal to vertical positions.
- The work is conceptually linked to Marcel Duchamp's Fountain.
- Duchamp's Fountain was created in 1917.
- The railroad components are described as bulky readymades.
- artcritical featured the exhibition as a 'Pick of the Day'.
Entities
Artists
- Marianne Vitale
- Marcel Duchamp
Institutions
- Contemporary Fine Art
- artcritical
Locations
- Berlin
- Germany