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Chinati will host an opening and reception (and a performance of sorts) for artists in residence Folke Köbberling and Martin Kaltwasser on Thursday, January 7 from noon till 2:00PM at the Locker Plant on East Oak Street. Everyone is invited to stop by (and perhaps assist the artists in changing the face of public transportation in far West Texas).

The Berlin-based artists Köbberling and Kaltwasser have been collaborators since 1998. Their projects often take the form of makeshift buildings constructed using cast-off, donated, and recycled materials. The buildings, which the artists often inhabit for a brief period upon construction, are designed as critical, adaptive responses to specific environments—usually urban ones.

As a key inspiration Köbberling and Kaltwasser often cite the gecekondular of Istanbul. Gecekondu is a Turkish word meaning "built overnight"; gecekondular are shanties erected and inhabited so quickly that Turkish law prohibits their razing. The outskirts of Istanbul have been transformed by gecekondular. These Turkish shanties, sprouting overnight and created from scratch, represent for Köbberling and Kaltwasser a rebuke and counteraction to top-down urban planning, "correct" architecture, and relentless development. Köbberling and Kaltwasser have built low-cost, low-tech homes (as well as kiosks, bus shelters, vehicles, etc.) in a number of cities in Germany, always with an eye toward the particular conditions of a given place and whatever scrap might be at hand.

At the Locker Plant next Thursday (and also across the street in the park behind the Post Office) the artists will address—and attempt to redress—a perennial want in Marfa: the lack of public transportation. For the exhibition the Locker Plant has been made over into a makeshift train station waiting room, and Köbberling and Kaltwasser will attempt to convince the daily Amtrak train to make an unscheduled stop in Marfa.

Following their interaction with the train, on Thursday evening the artists will give a talk about their work at 7:00PM at the Marfa Book Company.

For more information, please contact:
The Chinati Foundation
1 Cavalry Row
Marfa, TX 79843
t 432 729 4362
www.chinati.org