Lecture given during the opening of Komplett Fast exhibition (23
March-14 April 2018) artists
SIGRID KRENNER and ERNST MIESGAN
Many
thanks to the curator Andrea Kopranovic and PERISCOPE art space who invited me to present reflections/notes/impressions on
the exhibition.
***
You would wonder, I imagine, why I’m
here, in this space, where the exhibited artworks speak for
themselves and don’t need much introduction. I was invited for this
presentation, in order to unpack and unpick these works to the best
of my ability and according to what resonates with my own references,
the kind of art I am looking at or the books I m reading.
Intro
‘Art would like to realise, with
human means, the speech of the non-human.’ This sentence was published
posthumously in Theodor Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory (1970), which is
full of phrases beguiling as this, always perched just between
insight and jargon, ready to veer into either direction at any one
moment. How far can I allow myself to speculate when imagining the
speech of the non-human? One direction is that the speech of the
non-human stands for ways of communication, which are precise,
effective, embedded within a system and more important totally
alienating if you are not part of the same species. So this is art, a
system with its own internal logic, which has the capacity to render
impossible, or improbable, qualities; one being to include and
exclude at the same time. I think making art is difficult, writing
about it is also difficult but I guess that’s why we are all here
tonight because we like difficult things and we like to put ourselves
in vulnerable positions. The other quality I extract from Adorno’s
short definition of art aside from this paradoxical relationship to
self-referentially alludes to the visceral quality, which I’d like
to explore by occasionally making reference to the abject.
Ernst Miesgang’s sculptures are
replicas of human or animals’ organs found inside ceramic based
mass produced collectibles. The membrane covering the heart for
example exposes areas full of anatomical components sprouting out.
They are disturbing and yet amusing. While they may seem gory and
ghastly at times, they are inscribed with scientific truth downplayed
by its ludic and amusing appeal. They are precious and their rather
small size instigate a feeling in the region of affection. This
response is immediately supplanted by a sense of being in the
presence of something abject, when confronted with the overflowing
guts and internal organs as if you’d open a door which once opened
cannot be closed anymore. I see what I am not supposed to see.
Immaculately executed, as science would require and exhibited in this
way, on white plinths they become curiosity provoking specimens –
items befitting a museological space; members of a class of like
objects. This chosen method of display only enhances Miesgang’s
direct interest in scientific truth and his work undertaken within
the last years, is in his own words, ‘a homage to science’,
inscribed in the sculptures and collages displayed here.
These decorative objects entered the
common imaginair somewhere after WWII which those of us brought up in
Central Europe and Eastern and, especially if you happen to come from
a working or lower middle class family, like I do, remember the
exotic animals, the ballerina, the bride and the groom or the Chinese
lady (we in Romania got this a lot… sometimes you go to someone’s
house and they would have two identical Chinese ladies or more. They
were so many of them when I was growing up that to my mind it was the
Romanians who invented them).
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| Exhibition view |
As kitsch, these are quintessential
objects of ideology. Gustave Flaubert decided as much on Kitsch as
the organising principle for his book Madam Bovary, for which the
cultural ‘geist’ was captured exclusively through the fleeting
trends and shallow affective character of the popular and
sentimentalist art of his day. (It is worth mentioning that while the
main character Emma Bovary was too modern for her time, she also read
romantic literature in her youth.) The Chinese lady of my upbringing
traverses Flaubert’s romantic novels and mannerist hand made
statues of his 19th century, winding up as the epitome of 20th
Century kitsch for which the ‘mechanical reproducible’ has
culminated in a veritable abyss of kitsch production. The unassuming
brevity of the term ‘post-fordist’ appears designed to allay the
mental (and ethical) exhaustion of trying to conceive of the
terrifying scale and force of production and its counterparts, in our
historical moment.
These Kitsch objects of my youth were
the next best thing to an original, indicators of taste, and hence,
of social status. This “disembowelment” performed on these
objects by Miesgang, the sometimes halving of the object to creating
a cross section, as if operating with a skapell on a dissecting
table, satisfies a perverse curiosity; the desire to comprehend the
hidden mechanics of a gadget, or perhaps the meaning of graphics in
the financial times or how a whole infrastructure works. This desire
mixed with anxiety seems in tune with the urgency demanded by our
times, marked by, amongst other things, the very real possibility of
extinction. Extinction of the species, the final countdown if it’s
to follow the biologist Lynn Margulis’s speculation: ‘a species
only progresses successfully according to evolutionary rules when it
develops towards its own self-destruction.’
I’d like to entertain this idea of
the abject a bit more and suggest that it is present in a smaller
dosage in the works of the other artist of the exhibition, Sigrid
Krenner. I am making reference to a video installation from 2010,
titled Just for you. The work features a film of approx. 6min showing
Sigrid eating a chocolate bar containing almonds, which she spits out
and place in a bowl shown in a photograph, which completes the
installation. One reading of it is that by separating the almonds
from the chocolate bar, she is creating found objects – she is
generating rejects. Instead of picking up abandoned, unloved objects
she’s literally making them, except that she’s using her body
fluids, namely saliva - which brushes in my mind against the abject. A bowl of almonds – an express
invitation to dip in, to partake, a social custom, a micro-social
space at a cocktail party - has reached the exhibition via someone
else’s mouth. It is not a definite case of abject if we think of
an inveterate music fan, religious fanaticism or relic worshiping,
and so on; any such prosthetics related to ecstatic states,
serendipity or spirituality add value to these objects. If we are
programmed to find bodily fluids disgusting, it’s because
Christianity and how the maternal body is viewed, has something to do
with it, according to the philosopher Julia Kristeva’s thesis.
Kristeva describes the abject as the place where ‘meaning
collapses,’; ‘Not me. Not that. But not nothing, either. A
somethin’ that I do not recognize as a thing.’(Powers of Horror:
An Essay on Abjection by Julia Kristeva)
Kristeva defines the abject in a
non-definition, one that is there but she cannot display in words.
Being a music fan is no lesser than a fervent God worshiper and a
tissue impregnated with Madonna’s sweat (as in the pop start) can
be as sought after as Jesus’ shroud or a lover’s bodily traces.
Being a music fan was previously explored by Sigrid in This
combination is not recommended (2017), realized in collaboration with
artists Karina Kueffner and Julia Gutweniger. This work invites
visitors to pick up onl y one copy from the two stalk of postcards
representing the two Modern Taking German band members, Thomas Anders
and Dieter Bohlen, signifier of a past its glorious moment mass
cultural product.
The title of this exhibition was
selected by Krenner and it follows from her practice of using phrases
heard in the street from passers-by, which make an impression on her.
One could call it the poetry of controlled randomness. From what I
gather by using google translate and asking Sigrid for clarification
since I don’t speak German, the title KOMPLETT FAST plays with the
essential indeterminacy of words since it could also be FAST
KOMPLETT. It sounds like a product of google translate, which can
actually produce involuntary poetry. In his quest to find the sublime in the
nonsense, the play writer Eugene Ionesco proposed
translating texts literally just as google translate does now. The
work Sigrid is presenting here borrows the title from a computer
update A condition analysis is carried out
(2017) and is formed of a replica of a found wood
cabinet (perhaps suitable to display Sigrid’s reworked
collectibles, just like I used to see in my childhood) into a
non-functional, mysterious object complete with a multi-colorful
wrapper found in the drawer. This cabinet, a rip off of late
Modernist style is placed on a simple, red carpet, which in a
surrealist twist covers the floor and the wall. A framed photograph
of a peeled banana hangs unassumingly on the wall. The banana is a
recurring artistic devise in her practice, an interest she has in
bent, elongated objects turned motiff, which she previously explored
in drawings and ceramic works. All three objects composing this work
together with Miesgang’s sculptures, which previously inhabited
someone’s living room before being discarded to the flee markets
are 1:1 representations, which only add to the feeling of domesticity
recreated in a theater setting like situation, where something is
about to happen. Within this setting, the banana gives the impression
of a crescent moon, evoking, in turn, perspective via this nighttime
‘horizon’. The wrapping paper becomes here a signifier of
randomness and how contingency plays a fundamental role in meaning
formation. for the current exhibition.
In 2016 Miesgang started the series of collages titled Critters. He explained to me his working method which implies dozens of litter newspapers with the same date, which he collects from European cities he finds himself in. Some images or shapes he finds attractive are ripped off by hand and then glued together to create these in between anatomical details and underwater formations created in the dark. Again, as in his sculptures, I’d like to suggest that we are presented with something we are not supposed to see but which is nevertheless part of our environment. The cardboards on which these collages are made force in their own history since they actually are the backsides of paintings or photographs he had found in the flee markets of Vienna, where he lives and works. Miegang’s collages can take different shapes but the one exhibited here stands out. It is a reminisce of a franc-masonic logo or some kind of esoteric sect. It is a signifier of the times are all experiencing at the moment, a depressing post 2008 era for Europe, where sadly we have been noticing an increased need to engage in essentialist and populist narratives. Because these cardboards are so precious they actually determine the working method to a certain extend since one cannot start all over again as you’d do with an easily replaceable canvas. Like in the sculptures, where there is no definite control over how the cracks will turn out, the cardboards with their stains and traces of time are incorporated in the process making and impact the final outcome allowing for the contingency to play a significant role.
 |
| Exhibition view |
In 2016 Miesgang started the series of collages titled Critters. He explained to me his working method which implies dozens of litter newspapers with the same date, which he collects from European cities he finds himself in. Some images or shapes he finds attractive are ripped off by hand and then glued together to create these in between anatomical details and underwater formations created in the dark. Again, as in his sculptures, I’d like to suggest that we are presented with something we are not supposed to see but which is nevertheless part of our environment. The cardboards on which these collages are made force in their own history since they actually are the backsides of paintings or photographs he had found in the flee markets of Vienna, where he lives and works. Miegang’s collages can take different shapes but the one exhibited here stands out. It is a reminisce of a franc-masonic logo or some kind of esoteric sect. It is a signifier of the times are all experiencing at the moment, a depressing post 2008 era for Europe, where sadly we have been noticing an increased need to engage in essentialist and populist narratives. Because these cardboards are so precious they actually determine the working method to a certain extend since one cannot start all over again as you’d do with an easily replaceable canvas. Like in the sculptures, where there is no definite control over how the cracks will turn out, the cardboards with their stains and traces of time are incorporated in the process making and impact the final outcome allowing for the contingency to play a significant role.
 |
| Exhibition view |
***
