Mark Wallinger (*1959), one of  the most important and influential artists of his generation, is concerned with the basic formal manifestations of human culture in his media-spanning work. Wallinger’s careful recreation of Brain Haw’s Parliament Square Protest Camp at the Tate Britain in London is representative of the artist’s tight-rope walk between manifestation and genre picture. In 2007, Wallinger was nominated as a candidate for the Turner Prize for his exhibition titled State Britain. For the “Sculptur Projekte Münster” opening in June, Mark Wallinger will install his new work Zone in the urban context.

When the credits of a film begin to roll the audience either stands up or, in a best case scenario, begins to reflect upon the film. The End draws attention to this peripheral element of the film experience. In many current films the length of the credits requires more than a single musical track. Here Wallinger only needs one: An der schönen blauen Donau by Johann Strauss. It transports us automatically to Stanley Kubrick’s film epic 2001: A Space Odyssey and, as the music whisks us to the depths of the universe, we realize just what The End is about.

Following Francesco Vezzoli’s film Caligula, a trailer for a non-existent film, Wallinger has emptied the visual content of film in an even more radical way in depicting the book of all books. In 2002 with the video Via Dolorosa (currently on view in Berlin at the Hamburger Bahnhof and permanently installed in the Dome in Milan) Wallinger blocks out 90 percent of the visual frame of Franco Zefferelli’s film Jesus from Nazareth with a black rectangle. The original film is transformed into the background support for a barrier that, while watching, becomes ever more physically present.