The title of Bar du Bois’ (engl. wood bar) wallpaper, Water Lilies, evokes the beginnings of modernism and the first decades of the 20^th century. Leaving Impressionism behind, Claude Monet (1840–1926) moved away from landscape painting via the motif of water lilies anchored in water and found an early form of abstraction by abandoning the horizon. Viewed from above and without clear reference points, a horizontal surface became an indeterminate space in the vertical.

Like their famous artist colleague from Giverny, the Viennese art collective Bar du Bois, founded in 2013, also uses this effect and the oscillation of a liquid surface as an iridescent and diffuse basis. Their 'blossoms' come from the world of contemporary goods: rolls of adhesive tape, hotel suitcase trolleys, pacifiers, tobacco products of various kinds, pill boxes, a Diddl Mouse drawing from the 1990s, and other artifacts of everyday culture cavort on the dark green shimmering background. For the wallpaper commissioned by the evn collection, various motifs were treated in a painterly manner and digitally placed in the 'pond', a nature morte of modern bohemians. In a clever, repetitive wallpaper pattern, a theoretically infinite water surface and the objects floating on it emerge like a visual mantra.

Bar du Bois' approach is playful and focused on results. With the eponymous (wandering) bar as a concept, the collective sets out with a changing line-up (here: Andreas Harrer, Julian Turner, Florian Pfaffenberger, and Camilla Bischoff), engaging with exhibition business and art events in a refreshingly meaningless way. Attention to detail and resourceful realizations are celebrated with relish and exposed as affected in equal measure. Aware of the quality criteria and material fetish of the Wiener Werkstätte, all variants of design at Bar du Bois are comparatively unpretentious, albeit thoughtful and imaginative. The concept of formal diversity combined with the joy of creation emerge as common strengths. Collaboration as artistic strategy, the work on the network, and the collective process are just as important as their outcome.

Heike Maier-Rieper, 2021 (translation: Virginia Dellenbaugh)