Or: Art & Customs & Moving House.

I know, I promised a nice blog post about my wife nearly getting arrested at customs. Well, she went to collect an item that was marked “gift” on the collecting sheet. How was she to know it would be an artwork I bought in the USA and that therefore wasn’t a gift at all? And how was she to know that the artwork contained a design of Adolf Hitler and a Swastika, which is a forbidden symbol in Germany? (Here is a link to the artwork by Frank Kozik I’m talking about.)

Well. The swastika issue came up when she had to unpack the “gift” for the officer to inspect. The first thing to be seen really is the name “Adolf” and a swastika. The man looked not amused. It was quickly resolved when the certificate of the print being a “piece of art” came out, too. Which was marked with a “thank you for your order” sticker. Which in turn raised the “gift vs. non-gift” issue. “You said it was a gift! You can be arrested for that! Five years of prison …” A  phone call to me and me faxing the paypal certificate solved that one. My wife’s dry remark to the customs officer: “He probably didn’t tell me beforehand this was coming, because he knows pretty well that I do not approve of him buying that sort of stuff. He was afraid I’d give him the trouble he deserves.” Which kind of made him smile again, she said.

Yes, my wife had a right to be pissed off. And she was. Slightly. And why does she still like me? (This is not the first time I did something other people would have been pissed off or at least irritated by.) Maybe because I my collecting art generates material she can talk about whenever the conversation with her colleagues shifts towards illnesses of the body, astrology, children or ruined relationships … or a combination thereof.

Moving house is another business all together. I did so last week and I still am. The “moving” itself was fast but the setting up takes time. I still have some painting and woodwork left to do. Both of which is messy stuff and so I have to keep my art boxed. Not a pretty sight, I tell you! I can’t wait for it to invade my walls … maybe another week or so …

Or: Stasis caused by over-stimulation.

True, I’m not writing very often these days. But I have not stopped collecting art. No way, quite on the contrary. I’m still waiting for two packages from the USA containing the two works by Kozik I bought last week.

In two weeks I will move into a new flat, where my artworks will be installed for the first time in a proper way. I would like to move in right now. Some things you just have no control over. But there will be lots of photos to post. And you’re all invited to come by and have a look at my little collection. Make arrangements from October onwards …

Right now, there’s another weekend coming up and I experience a feeling of restlessness. It’s one of those moments when I feel overwhelmed by the overabundance of things I could do, books I could read, websites I could look at, artists I want to learn more about. It tends to paralyze me. I’m one of the people who prefer a restaurant menu with three choices to one with fifty. I have to learn how to filter. After all, this whole art-thing is new to me. Plus I tend to be lazy and not go out much.

Having said that: I’m actually in preparation mode for some art fairs. Frieze London, Art Forum Berlin and Art Basel Miami are events I will attend this year. So I will go out. If you have suggestions for an amateur collector on how to best muddle through … I’m all ears!

Or: The robust canvas.

That’s it. I’m back from Burning Man. Actually, I came back yesterday, Wednesday. But the jet lag (and probably the three Rusty Nails in a Reno bar the night before) made me somewhat sleepy and so I spent the most of the time since then in bed …

I had taken with me a patina painting by Karin Sander. And I’m told that Austria is waiting to see the results. So let me just briefly explain what happened. I had the canvas in a sealed envelope which I opened the second the wheels hit the desert, or the “playa”, as the Burners call it. In order to be able to carry the painting with me at all times, I attached two Tesa Powerstrips to the back of it and carried it around my neck on to lanyards. Hurray for Tesa Powerstrips: Dust storms, port-a-potties, flame-throwers, art cars, hiking the desert …

On the left you can see the patina painting attached to a box of rebar while we set up the art project “Gort” by Stefan Werner and Uli Klumpp (an array of six giant theremins). We had 8 hours or something of dust storm that felt like sand-blast peeling. On the right you can see the painting in front of the Basura Sagrada. A huge structure made from scrap wood where the Burners leave messages, place ashes of their deceased or things they are sorry for. The temple is burnt on the last night every year.

Naturally, I didn’t want to wear the artwork at all times, which is why I sometimes attached it to a structure. On the left, it is hanging on the shade structure in our camp. On the right side, I took it to the top of a 10-story steel structure called Babylon, where I went for breakfast one morning.

Here is a glimpse of the environment the patina painting was created in. Well, the desert. I had to tell maybe 50 people what is up what that painting and one woman was like “Oh, Karin Sander!”. And a lot of people made jokes about pouring their beer over it but actually all of them were too shy to even touch it.

And after seven and a half days in the desert, running half naked after the water truck (yes me, with the painting, no pictures) and being rained on by alcohol (after being highly compressed, coloured and exploded in mid air, the unburned drops falling back down on the audience), this is what the painting looks like now: