The relativity of a work of art to its surroundings and its inception and reception shape the thematic heart of Rehberger's approach as an artist. Art creates its own frame of reference within which it defines its own function. Rehberger is concerned with the question of how such frames of reference develop and how they function when their individual parts are found in different contexts.

- Verbesserung Iguaçu
, 2002 is part of a series of four water fountains, and examines the possibilities of a subject's translation into a sculptural object, the existence of which is remotely distant from its origin's. Inspired, and named after the Iguaçu waterfalls in South America, the largest in the world, Verbesserung Iguaçu takes as its point of departure the shape of this waterfall when seen from bird's-eye view. The three colors, yellow, green, and black, indicate the junction of borders between the Argentinian province of Misiones, the Brazilian state of Panamá, and the Iguaçu River's division into upper and lower Iguaçu. Powered by an engine that substitutes the natural forces of a waterfall with an electric pump allowing for the circulation of water in the fountain, the sculpture can be perceived as an autonomous, semi-utilitarian object, the conceptual nature of which can be found, like much of Rehberger's work, on the border between what is traditionally classified as visual art and as design. Rehberger is interested in the interchanging of categories and their bodies of associated vocabulary, bringing fluidity into the rigorously self-policing categories of art.



Marketa Condeixa