fortuna (to distribute well)

Dim church interior: Shimotani's dark commandment tablets on a red brick wall, a string of small lights running diagonally across them, rows of wooden chairs below

Translucent plastic sheeting draped in a long diagonal fold across a red brick wall

The church interior of Pax Christi with objects wrapped in plastic and netting, text banners, and lines running from the altar across the floor

Rows of books on a shelf, one wrapped in plastic film, some replaced with green ones, red ribbon markers hanging out

A framed print with a large yellow circle, hanging alone on the red brick wall

Liora Epstein sits on the floor at the brick wall and reaches up to apply lettering to it

The transport crate of sandbox pilgrimage on a pallet truck between the rows of chairs in the nave, dark sheeting hanging above

Close-up of the crate of sandbox pilgrimage with three printed transport pictograms on its side

Felix Adam alias Büro für Produktbeschwerung sits at a table in the church counting money, daylight and green plants behind him

A clear plastic bag of dark soil with green handwritten lettering on it, in front of a brick wall

Images of Jesus Christ, half covered by a greenish plastic film, a spotlight with taped-over edges standing nearby

Dark plastic sheeting draped across the church window front, the green churchyard visible outside

Exterior view of the Pax Christi church: a low brick building with a noticeboard, a person standing in front of it

FORTUNA (gut verteilen; 'to distribute well') 2025

Intervening installation Kunstkirche Pax Christi, Krefeld-Oppum, April 3 – June 30, 2025 Invited by Sebastian Blasius, artist and art historian In cooperation with Büro für Produktbeschwerung

Materials:
Bubble wrap, gauze bandages, barrier sheeting, thin plastic sheeting (Lupo foil), vacuum packaging, construction netting, fabric banner with sewn-in laser-cut typography, transparent wall lettering, floor lines (3 × 3 stripes), yellow-green earthing cable, ceiling light; sandbox pilgrimage (art transport crate, pallet truck, compostable costume, hangtags)

Dimensions:
Dimensions variable

After The Bar at the Kaiser Wilhelm Museum in 2024, FORTUNA (gut verteilen) — to distribute well — is Liora Epstein’s second solo exhibition in Krefeld: this time not in a museum, but in the Kunstkirche Pax Christi, a parish church that has carried a collection of contemporary art for decades.

FORTUNA has no single finished state. The installation emerges over weeks, almost imperceptibly: Shimotani’s commandment tablets disappear under bubble wrap, one side of the Rückriem altar is wound in gauze bandages, wicker chairs are vacuum-sealed, windows are veiled with construction netting.

On the red brick walls, phrases become legible like watermarks, each placed beside an existing work. Fortuna ist raus — “Fortuna is out” — stands next to Rinke’s Tor zur Ewigkeit. nichts ärmeres unter der Sonn’ // als Euch, from Goethe’s Prometheus, stands near Staeck’s Abendmahl. And in seiner (unsichtbaren) Hand — “in his (invisible) hand” — stands at the altar, where God’s hand and the invisible hand of the market meet in a single line.

On the Jetelová altar lies a white fabric banner with the words FORTUNA IST RAUS sewn into it in plain laser-cut type. Three lines grow from the altar into the room: rays of a cross, and at the same time three stripes, each line made of three closely spaced parallel bands. And just as gradually as everything appeared, it disappears again. In the end the room has withdrawn into itself, as if nothing had happened. Or almost nothing.

Epstein heard the sentence Fortuna ist raus on the radio in late May 2024, when Fortuna Düsseldorf missed promotion to the first division. But Fortuna is also the Roman goddess who distributes luck blindly, her eyes covered. The installation stretches between these two Fortunas: between football stands and liturgy, brand logo and gesture of blessing, the invisible hand of the market and the promise of being held by God. The coverings that are meant to protect also expose the vulnerability of what they enclose — the artworks, the room, faith itself. All of it depends on being affirmed, again and again, in order to hold.

Pax Christi is no neutral place for this. Its founding priest Karl-Josef Maßen (1931–2017) understood contemporary art as a site of doubt and of open perspectives on the content of faith, a critical companion to the liturgy that keeps a congregation from settling into self-satisfaction. Works by Joseph Beuys, Ulrich Rückriem, Magdalena Jetelová, Günther Uecker, Klaus Rinke, Klaus Staeck and Shimotani run through the brick building — art that does not illustrate, but confronts. FORTUNA takes Maßen at his word and carries doubt back into the room: existing works are wrapped, overlaid, placed in a new light — temporarily, without a trace, and yet as an intervention that sparked lively debate at the artist talk.

During the exhibition a coffin-like art transport crate was driven into the rows of chairs on a pallet truck and set down four rows from the back: sandbox pilgrimage temporarily found its place in Pax Christi. One of the evenly spaced ceiling lights was extended with a yellow-green earthing cable and aimed at the lettering on the crate’s side: Art. open here.

The exhibition opened one month before the birth of Epstein’s daughter. That, too, is part of this work: a body in transition, a room in transition — and in between, the question of how luck can be distributed well.

Images 1–5, 7, 8, 10–12 Installation view FORTUNA (gut verteilen) Kunstkirche Pax Christi, Krefeld, 2025
Image 6 Liora Epstein applying the wall lettering, 2025
Image 9 Performance, Kunstkirche Pax Christi, 2025
Image 13 Exterior view, Kunstkirche Pax Christi, 2025
Photos by Felix Adam