Skulpturenpark Köln

With her work for Sculpture Park Cologne, Ina Weber (b. 1964 in Diez, Germany) has erected a comical monument to the traditional institution of the public outdoor swimming pool. From the very outset, the artist has acknowledged that her sculpture will be (mis)used in some way and gone on the offensive in this respect. Vogelbad is recognised and gratefully accepted by exhausted visitors to the park, especially by the thirsty and the mudlarks as a watering hole. For our feathered friends, the diving platform and the starting blocks serve as ideal landing targets on which they can secure a panoramic vantage point. As such, Ina Weber's monument to the public swimming pool and the "performances" staged within give pause for thought: For at issue here is Mother Nature, who cares not a jot about decoding artifice and less so art, and the uninhibited manner in which she flouts aesthetic and socio-cultural concepts, structures, conventions and rules. Our feathered friends are clearly oblivious to this evocation of the bathing culture of the late 19th century, Functionalism or Minimal Art, indeed to anything which the art and cultural historians may read into Ina Weber's swimming pool.