901 Pacific (Vogel’s studio), 

Venice, California

1978

 

13  x  9 ft (4 x 2,7 m)

3 tons of blue colored common bricks, glass, gold plates

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Death in Venice was a site-specific installation created by the artist in her studio at 901 Pacific in Venice, California. It consisted of a brick wall constructed some two feet behind the storefront window, extending from one lateral wall to the other and stopping two feet of the ceiling.

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In order to set up the work Vogel completely remodeled the space. She removed the loft in the back of the room, and in front she constructed a wall. The wall has been located very close to the front window, so when watching it from outside it looked as if exhibited in a glass-case. On the facade which was one space in a row of similar brick buildings Vogel gold-leafed a frame of already existing ornamental bricks. One couldn’t see the interior through the window, there was no depth, just a wall. But the blue colored brick wall was like an abstract painting that bursts the frame.

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The back side of the work provided a different perspective - as Melinda Wortz noted it was more  private, enclosed and seen first through a large volume of empty, immaculate studio space. When Vogel tore apart all constructions in her studio she left the stairs to the loft, but no loft. If someone stood there - she or he was at a high level with the edge of Death in Venice and could see the light flowing across the top of the wall, “like the foam at the crest of a huge wave” - as Melinda Wortz put it. The artist created small holes in the wall, which reflected the position of stars in the night skies, when the cars passed back and forth this shimmering light would come in the cracks in Death in Venice like starlight.

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For the artist herself it was a metaphor of being trapped in the studio and art scene of Los Angeles. I did Death in Venice because I did a sort of dying there, and I did the wall, took it down, took out everything… and put it all back in - it was a huge project”.  “Death in Venice  was like the Berlin Wall” adds the artist. Jan Butterfield wrote that this “work was monumental, impressive, and not a little frightening.” “Its presence is unmistakably feminine, at once solid and sensuous” - noted Melinda Wortz.