In his conceptual works Büchel displays an attitude that is critical of institutions. In 2002, he auctioned off his invitation to Manifesta 4 on eBay. In Capital Affair (together with Gianni Motti at the Helmhaus in Zurich), he promised to give the entire budget for the exhibition to the visitor who found a check hidden in the empty exhibition rooms supervised by a notary public. In 2006, he triggered an intense cultural debate in Salzburg: During the Kontra.com Festival, he successfully organised together with the Aktion Reales Salzburg (ARS) that he himself founded, a citizens’ petition under the motto Salzburg bleib frei (Salzburg Stay Free) leading up to a city-wide referendum over a five-year moratorium on contemporary art in the centre of the Mozart metropolis.
With the exhibition Deutsche Grammatik, Christoph Büchel deals with recent German history and current political and social structures in the country. In 1818 Jacob Grimm, at the time a librarian at the Kassel Fridericianum, wrote the first volume of his German Grammar; in 2008 the same title serves as a metaphor for an exhibition focusing on German culture. Christoph Büchel makes use of the 2,000-square-meter exhibition space of the Kunsthalle Fridericianum as well as the exterior area. With a comprehensive installation in which realities are reconstructed in a detailed, comprehensive spatiality, he addresses the situation in Germany and the meaning and function of the oldest museum building in continental Europe. In this framework the politica, Germany’s first political-party fair, takes place on September 6th and 7th.