DEAD EXHIBITION
An almost narrative exhibition
1.12.2018 – 28.12.2018
Opening: 30.11.2018 at 6 pm
Performance by Die!Landschaft: 15.12.2018 at 7 pm
The idea for this exhibition came from a short anonymous French text. The subtitle of the exhibition “An almost narrative exhibition” was chosen because the works on display do not directly illustrate the text or tell its story. They are a supplement to its content.
There is no title to the text but “Sortilège” (“Spell”) could have been a heading for it. The title of Sebag’s painting. This text avoids images as those that can be found in novels. It rather describes cold facts, but it is filled with details and revelations. And each fragment of the text has evoked a specific work. This is how the exhibition was conceived.
DB has been in prison. We understand this only when the author points on the “tear” that he sees as DB removes his glasses. He doesn’t write a word about it. Yet, it is a very significant tattoo for some people who went to prison. The collage by Franz Mon, on which we see a gun crossing the face of a smiling woman, represents DB well.
Knizak’s “Killed Book” comes as a reference to DB’s and anonymous author’s dyslexia and illiteracy. The book is cut and torn, reading it would be difficult and comprehension of the text incomplete, if accessible at all.
This is how the text leads to the last phrase, that catches a reader by surprise. Life is this “something like” by Jiri Valoch.
Text
db, the grandson of the famous mb and the son of the less famous jb, lives in his grandfather’s house in a village far from a town, from which he was not allowed to leave and where he received us holding his dog on a leash, first for a coffee on the terrace of a restaurant near the station from which we came – I think he wanted to know if we were honest people before he let us into his house, formerly the house of his famous grandfather – where he sat in front of us and ordered a sausage sandwich and apple juice, a coffee and apple juice for us, without taking off his mirrored sunglasses, and we also did not take off ours, we talked about his dog, she had hers too, then he took off his glasses, and I saw a blue one under his right eye that wasn’t running down, I had already noticed the indicative tattoos on his forearms, we got up and went to his house, but before he arrived he was attracted by the stiff body of a sparrow lying on his back and he wanted to revive him and claimed that he could get him out of his lethargy with water, he told us to go on, then he came to us and then we entered the great house of his grandfather, the famous mb, where he showed us some works by such famous artists as his grandfather, then, because we were there to acquire a work, he took from a large shelf a small object from 1957 by cm, which we bought, then he gave me a bill and told me that he was more or less illiterate or dyslexic and that I shouldn’t blame him if he made spelling mistakes, he couldn’t guess that I was writing this way to avoid spelling mistakes, which are more common when words and style are too elaborate, and he took us back to the station, we liked each other, my girlfriend sometimes texted him, and we saw him again a few weeks later, he seemed less tense, he knew us, didn’t have to be suspicious anymore, we weren’t thieves, he unpacked a sculpture of hm, unscrewed it to show us the signature and the date, it was over our budget, he almost apologized, I bought the beautiful multiple OM MANI PADME HUM by fk from 1968, we left again after about an hour, and a few days after our visit, my girlfriend sent him an e-mail to offer him a work of cg’s, but he didn’t answer even though we had previously agreed to visit cm together, but since he didn’t answer my girlfriend’s e-mail, I called cm and he told me that we could visit him the day after my call at 10 am, what we have done, and when we arrived, we told him we would have liked to come with db, but he didn’t answer our messages, then mg said he shot his life,
Exhibited Artists
William Burroughs | Central news | Al Hansen | Alexandre Hollan | William Klein | Milan Knizak | Jiri Kolar | Youri Lenquette | Boris Lurie | Franz Mon | Zoran Music | Arnold Odermatt | Robin Page | Arnulf Rainer | Arnulf Rainer & Dieter Roth | Guillaume Sebag | Jiri Valoch | Wolf Vostell
Catalogue
Press release
360° 3D Panorama Tour