11/03—15/04/2026
site intervention
Three Underground Spaces
Third intervention
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Erik Smith’s third and final intervention for Three Underground Spaces cannot be overlooked when approaching the castle. Just off to the right, extending from the main path and parking lot into the castle grounds, the site is cordoned off by a perimeter safety fence. What brings the investigative exhibition project to completion is a literal excavation. The area selected for the intervention is, according to what the artist learned, ostensibly the location where a second cistern remains embedded underground.
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11/03/2026
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16:00–19:00 — Opening
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17:00–18:00 — Guided tour of all interventions
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with Erik Smith in English
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- Logically speaking, the third intervention would seem to be the first one. It provides the conceptual grounding for the other two: it deals most explicitly with the underground and what the artist has discovered there; the method employed is digging, an approach that neither adds material nor takes it away; the work itself is nothing but a hole—an exposed fissure, cavity, void. The third intervention both reveals what lies buried in the ground and denies access to it—a gesture already present in the previous two. Taken together, the three interventions articulate a range of both tangible and speculative perspectives on the underground.
- Finally, it is also here that the notion of found sound emerges in its most unadulterated form—the sound we encounter around us, as well as what we discover in it. Standing before the excavation site, gazing into the open pit and reflecting on its relationship to sound, we are left to consider whether any aspect of the surrounding soundscape, whether audible to human ears or not, has been added to or altered in any way.
- Third intervention was developed in collaboration with an archeologist, Janusz Jędrzejewski.
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Erik Smith
- an artist with a background in comparative literature and visual arts, currently living and working in Berlin. His site-specific projects and other works have been presented at ALL, Palermo (2024); University of Porto, Academy of Fine Arts, Porto (2023); Galerie Stadtpark, Krems (2021); de Appel Centre for Contemporary Art, Amsterdam (2016); Skulpturenpark Berlin_Zentrum, Berlin (2012); and Sculpture Center, New York (2008). His first monograph, Substrata, was co-published in 2024 by permanent Verlag, Berlin, U. Porto–i2ADS, Porto, and Counterpath, Denver/New York, with the support of Stiftung Kunstfonds Bonn.
