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RAUS, Gleimtunnel, Berlin, 2019, Both peaces of the work Wind where stolen, one in 2018 and the other one in 2019. Since 2019 RAUS
RAUS- OUT : The Aesthetics of Absence
In 2018/2019, the artwork WIND–Rein/Raus a kinetic signs that oscillated playfully between meanings—where stolen. All that remains is its frame. What might appear as a loss has instead transformed into a new artistic state: the work continues to exist, but no longer as a shifting dialogue between words and wind. Instead, it now manifests as a void, a trace, an echo of a decision no longer driven by chance but by an unknown human hand.
This unintended transformation, which could be called simply RAUS- Out, aligns with a long tradition in conceptual art that explores absence, negation, and the fragile nature of an artwork. In a way, it recalls Robert Rauschenberg’s Erased de Kooning Drawing (1953), where an act of erasure became the work itself. Similarly, the voidas an artistic principle, well-known from minimalist and conceptual art, finds a new, almost accidental manifestation here.
However, while Rauschenberg’s work questioned authorship, this piece reveals another dimension: power and exclusion. The original work asked: Who is in? Who is out? Who makes that decision? By removing the sign’s text, this question has not only been reinforced but enacted—someone has decided that the work should no longer exist, at least not in its original form. Ironically, this act amplifies the work’s original statement: its physical removal mirrors societal processes of erasure, exclusion, and the arbitrary shifting of boundaries.
At the same time, a new level of reception emerges. An empty sign or an abandoned frame invites projection—its silent presence becomes an open invitation to reflect on what is no longer there. The absence of the words In and Outuniversalizes the original question: What has been lost? What has been removed—and why?
Whether intentional or not, the work has evolved. No longer a kinetic object, it has become a monument to disappearance, a memorial to the fragility of artistic expression in a public space that is never neutral. Perhaps this unplanned metamorphosis has ultimately elevated the work into the realm of true conceptual art—one that speaks not only through what is visible, but even more powerfully through what is missing.