Verwendungsnachweis
Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt, Germany
Entering this show featuring recent winners of the Jürgen Ponto Foundation’s award for young artists (among the most prestigious in the German-speaking world – the ironic title translates as ‘report on the expenditure of funds’), one is immediately struck by the white neon lettering running the length of the wall: A clear well-lighted place for books (2006). Also by David Lieske, and commanding the space in front of the piece, is a movie spotlight falling on the bronze cast of a closed book. On the opposite wall is a neo-Dada six-foot tall collage of sketches, colour studies, photographs and leather dye samples by Friedrich Kunath. Is it a pumpkin head or a tearful snowman, or does it not really matter? The title – Untitled (2007) – gives no clues.
The videos by the two female artists featured in the show are low-key: everyday sequences enigmatically filmed, full of suspense but de-dramatised by elevator muzak. In Getaway Inn (2006-7) by Astrid Nippoldt, a man’s hand reaches out towards a sexy blonde in a chic backless dress. The next sequence shows a suited bald man in a car, blinded by oncoming headlights, shielding his eyes with his hand. And so on. Andrea Facius’s ten-minute video Touching the City (2007) is a haptic exploration of unspecified urban space: fingers dancing on Art Nouveau fence posts, corrugated iron containers, bus windows and building site fences – and finally, along a vast banister, straight into the abyss. Jan Timme’s 24 Bilder pro Sekunde (24 Frames per Second, 2007), a technoid two-metre column made of 24 vertical mirrored strips, turns at one revolution per second to generate an endlessly meandering ribbon – like a film that has slipped off the reel. The ribbon is made up of mirror images of the whole room including the neon lettering and Dada face, while the viewer appears kaleidoscopically cut up and jerkily thrown together. Timme’s work forms an appealing contrast to Michael Beutler’s quasi-industrial machine that makes huge column segments out of rough paper. Beutler’s Rustika – kommt die 0 zur 8 (Rustica – 0 comes to 8, 2007), a cylindrical plywood press, resembles an outsize cheese box, its ‘lid’ suspended on a crane arm constructed out of aluminium beams, pieces of string and gaffer tape. This exemplary portrayal of a production process is more reminiscent of what Franz Erhard Walther referred to as the ‘Lagerform’ – the artistic mode of production based on the idea of the storage rather than that of the ‘studio’ – than of modern factories. The production process is quoted as an immanent part of the artwork, whereas Timme’s boldly stated art object immediately evokes the laboratory and future technologies, at the same time providing a dizzying reflection on today’s art circus. This juxtaposition allows the exhibition to at last gather momentum.
Beate Katz
Translated by Nicholas Grindell
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