A striking sculpture greets visitors at the Heidi Horten Collection: the over 16-ton Betonporsche (Concrete Porsche) by artist Gottfried Bechtold is installed directly on the \u201cdirector\u2019s parking space,\u201c right next to the main entrance of the museum.<\/p>\n
With the presentation of Betonporsche, the Heidi Horten Collection highlights an important position in contemporary Austrian art. Gottfried Bechtold\u2019s work is embedded in an ongoing discourse on material, authorship, and the cultural meaning of everyday objects. Since the late 1960s, Bechtold (b. 1947) has developed a precise, concept-driven practice across sculpture, photography, drawing, text, and actions in public space, consistently examining how objects gain value within social and economic systems.<\/p>\n
A central motif in his work is the automobile, which he has explored for over five decades.<\/p>\n
The Betonporsche\u2014one of his most iconic works\u2014is cast from an original Porsche 911. While it precisely follows the car\u2019s form, its material radically alters its meaning. The sports car\u2014associated with speed and mobility\u2014is rendered in solid concrete: heavy, immobile, and architectural. This transformation creates a tension between recognition and experience.<\/p>\n
The positioning of the Betonporsche on the \u201cdirector\u2019s parking space\u201d is a deliberate, site-specific gesture, chosen by the museum\u2019s new director Verena Kaspar-Eisert. A parking space is not only functional but also a marker of status and hierarchy. By occupying it with the massive sculpture by Gottfried Bechtold, it quietly questions notions of ownership, authority, and access. The work will remain in the sculpture garden in front of the museum for the foreseeable future, next to other sculptures by artists like Erwin Wurm, Miquel Barcel\u00f3 or Claude Lalanne, continuously shaping the spatial and conceptual experience of the museum.<\/p>\n
The Betonporsche shifts perception: movement becomes stillness, speed becomes irrelevant, and luxury turns into stagnation. In doing so, it connects to broader conceptual strategies of the late twentieth century while remaining rooted in Bechtold\u2019s sustained interest in repetition and transformation.<\/p>\n
A conjunctional cabinet exhibition (until 11 October, 2026) inside the museum expands its context, featuring photographs, films, and serial works that trace Bechtold\u2019s long-term engagement with the car motif. These works reveal the sculpture as part of an ongoing artistic inquiry shaped by repetition, variation, and documentation.<\/p>\n
A catalogue has been published to accompany the exhibition:<\/p>\n