Or: Why this sense of history?

On Friday I went to see the exhibition Soziale Diagramme. Planning reconsidered at the Künstlerhaus Stuttgart (link). You can go see it for yourself until August 23rd, by the way.

The program says the exhibition “presents artistic projects and historical material that focus on complex social systems.” The curators Jesko Fezer and Axel John Wieder pulled together a truely interesting array of items and had I watched every single one of the interesting films, I could have spent half a day at the exhibition.

The image above right is a section of a confusing historical piece “Les Aretes” by Martin Krampen, I think.

I didn’t know that “planning” (meaning the planning of cities also in cooperation with the people who have to live there etc, not planning in the marketing sense of the word) had it’s heyday between 1950 and 1970 and has since been abandoned. Instead, marketing techniques are employed to sell the results to the inhabitants.

Above left is another historical piece I really liked: “A planner is …” by Lucius Burckhardt. It’s nice to see how the definition of the word is just barely escaping him. It sort of reminds me of the book “Will Happiness Find Me” by David Fischli & Peter Weiss.

All the really interesting (graphical and contextual) historic pieces almost swallowed up all the contemporary work. From the contemporary stuff, Kateřina Šedá’s (link) piece “There’s Nothing There” grabbed my attention the most.

In her work, she asked the 200 inhabitants of a small village what they were usually doing on a Saturday and then compiled a schedule from that. On a given day, the inhabitants were then asked to follow that schedule, while the artist would shoot a film about it on the streets. No interviews, no intervention, just observation.

She set a few basic rules and apparently had to fight some rumours dealing with the subject of the film. The result is a very surreal documentary that shows a choreographed normality that is both frightening and funny at the same time. Going shopping, riding bikes, opening windows … all pretty normal things. We all do them every once in a while. But as soon as we start doing these things all together, it gets creepy. For me, its the thin line between our everyday life and George Orwell’s 1984. The thin line between voluntary or arbitrary choreography and imposed behaviour, created by our society and our way of life.

The question is: Why did I leave the exhibition feeling like I’ve been to a museum? The contemporary pieces couldn’t penetrate the impression of the historical ones. Maybe it’s because I’m inexperienced.

While being there I couldn’t help but think of “Slave City” by Atelier Van Lieshout (link). Especially “Prison Workshop” by Anthony Ward (from the late sixties) reminded me of that … I would have liked to see more modern interpretations of planning like that.

To end this post on an uplifting note, here is a section from a comic by Richard Ridley (1971):

PS: As I was walking home I came by a thing called “Interventionsraum” which is just round the corner from my office, yet I have never seen it. It displayed a work by Pablo Wendel (link). Probably best known for joing the “Terracotta Army”.

Or: The Strange Pace of the Art World

It’s been a while now since I bought my first art. In the meantime I have been e-mailing back and forth with Philipp Ziegler of the gallery, to decide on the framing. It’s now being done and I’m awaiting notice from the “framer” (Wohnhas in Stuttgart, if you’re from Stuttgart and need a really good place to have your art framed or hung).

Someone with a great sense of humour once said that “collecting art is the only investment that feels like shopping”. I can’t really say whether buying the art felt like shopping. It was more like being at some friend’s friend’s house, who then opened a cupboard and showed some hidden stash, saying “I have two of these myself”. And I don’t feel like I have invested anything because I have no real feeling for investment and money in general. Maybe I should talk to a banker about investment to get a feeling for it?

I spend my waiting time for my first art with reading books. “Owning Art” (link) is on my bedside table at the moment. Figuratively speaking since I neither have a bed nor a bedside table, but you get the picture. Then there’s five books in German here, including “HYPE!”, “Was ist gute Kunst?” and  “Tiefer hängen”. When am I supposed to read all that? Hey, I got a lifetime, so no hurries.

I will also be having a look at the current exhibition in the Künstlerhaus Stuttgart (link) that sounds interesting and I’m planning a trip to Hamburg, to see a few galleries recommended to me by Christian Pfaff (link) at Independent Collectors and I would love to see ReinkingProjekte (link) by Rik Reinking (link). He’s the one who bought an artwork I wanted to have: “Dark Matter” by Rudolf Reiber (full video here).

He took a photograph by Thomas Ruff (the same guy Lasse Schmidt Hansen borrowed the stars for his x/°° from) and painted over the thousands of stars to create “Dark Matter”. I love it. But I won’t get it.

Or: My first art

I bought art! To be honest, I bought it last week and apart from a little twitter note, I haven’t told anyone, yet. Why not? Hard to tell, probably because I don’t have the art at home yet. And this is a very unnerving situation.

Let’s start here: At the opening of “D.O.A. – Dreaming of Africa” (I wrote about that earlier) I talked to the curator Philipp Ziegler (who also works at Galerie Reinhard Hauff in Stuttgart, link) about me becoming a collector. Since we have seen each other at previous openings, you could say that he has an idea of what I like and why.

So when I asked him if he could recommend something to me, he immediately mentioned a specific work by Lasse Schmidt Hansen (link). I had come in contact with the work of Lasse a while back, at the very first opening at the Dorten Haus (link). Lasse had installed standard neon lights in our irregularly shaped space (see image below). I immediately liked the way Lasse approached standards and norms. What comes to mind is his having a carpet cut to the measurements on the ground plan of a room and then putting the carpet in that room. Just to realize that it doesn’t fit at all!

And now Philipp was to recommend some works by Lasse Schmidt Hansen for me to buy.

I went over to the gallery a week later and having finally found it some flights of stairs up in the back of the building (for an outside view, see the image below), I first had a look at the current exhibition “Botox to Go” by Frank Ahlgrimm (link).

Philipp told me some very interesting stories and one sentence stuck especially well: “Collecting starts where your own four walls stop.” As long as you can fit the art in your condo, you’re still decorating, in other words. So hey, I advanced rapidly from “nothing” to “home decorator” now. Still a long way to being a collector …

Anyway, back to the art I bought. Philipp showed me parts of Lasse’s edition x/°°. A series of A3 photocopies. Lasse printed an online version of one of Thomas Ruff’s “Star Series” (at least that’s what I think it was, link) and cut out the stars. Now he can sprinkle them onto a photocopier and thus creates star maps by photocopying the stars with the lid open (See how it was exhibited below).

The edition is called x/°° because the edition is infinite. He can always do it again and the outcome will be different. I bought the numbers 11 and 13, because they seem to belong together, the way the stars fell on them. What’s more, they’re prime numbers and they link my collecting passion with another passion I have: science fiction literature and vintage non-fiction books about space.

Here is how they were laid out and how I decided on them. Mine are the two on the right:

Philipp himself bought two of them and he’s having them framed now. I’ll wait to see how they turn to decide if I want mine to be framed in the same way. So it could be weeks before I actually have the first of my art in my own hands.