For it's urgency: "Work" (2005)

An older piece of mine, called "Work" (from the 2005 series "Heim|Fern|Weh"). No less timely today I think ...

Reset!

In December 2010, my work Good Homes from my series Critical Distance - a perpetual absence of home was included in the small group exhibition Reset! organized by the Curatorial Studio in the Art & Design Department at Grand Valley State University (Grand Rapids, Michigan). You'll find it documented here.

Please scroll down for more information on Critical Distance as well as a selection of the triptychs, diptychs and single images included in this series.

"Exquisite Corpse Drawing Project" at Gasser Grunert

Exquisite Corpse #25
Daniel Blochwitz
Will Cotton
Michael Bevilacqua

Exquisite Corpse Drawing Project
Leading Artists Recreate Surrealist Parlor Game
To Benefit Armitage Gone Dance

More than 200 internationally recognized artists are participating in a major series of collaborative drawings known as the Armitage Gone Dance Exquisite Corpse Project. They will be brought together at Gasser Grunert for three weeks only.

As with the 1920’s surrealist parlor game “cadavre exquise,” each drawing is constructed in a sequential combination by three or four artists; one for the head and shoulders, one or two for the torso, and one for the legs and feet. Composed on one sheet of paper that is passed from one artist to the next, the process celebrates the themes of chance encounters, surprise and radical juxtaposition. Artists were unaware of who was participating in each composition and could not view the image or work provided by previous artist. Works were created over the past year at a number of drawing parties or were shipped from one artist to the next. The works are a universal size of 30 x 16 inches.

Among the artists participating are: Vito Acconci, Laurie Anderson, Donald Baechler, John Baldessari, Ross Bleckner, Louise Bourgeois, Cecily Brown, Sandro Chia, Francesco Clemente, Chuck Close, Will Cotton, Eric Fischl, Robert Gober, Alex Katz, Karen Kilimnik, Jeff Koons, Richard Meier, Malcolm Morley, Tom Otterness, Tony Oursler, Chloe Piene, Enoc Perez, Richard Phillips, David Salle, Dana Schutz, Andres Serrano, Joel Shapiro, Rosemarie Trockel, William Wegman, Robert Wilson and Terry Winters. David Salle serves as curator and the project is managed by Tanja Grunert.

The “performative” aspect of art-making is celebrated as the Exquisite Corpse demonstrates how drawing and dance share an unpredictable nature and spontaneity. Proceeds will benefit Armitage Gone Dance, an internationally acclaimed contemporary dance company under the direction of renowned choreographer Karole Armitage. For three decades as a choreographer and director, Armitage has actively pushed the boundaries of classicism to create a contemporary idiom blending new dance, music and art. The Exquisite Corpse project is a way for a wide range of artists to express their support for Armitage’s work and also a way for her to acknowledge artists who have played a large role in her career.

First Look: Critical Distance

As promised, I've uploaded a selection of my almost complete, gallery-formated work called Critical Distance in the past few days. You can see it in the posts below. Edited into diptychs, triptychs and single photographs, I envision to show the final series in a montage sequence (see installation sketch), a blend of here and there and nowhere. The photograph above, Zur Heimat, is the directive and iconic 'cover' image for Critical Distance - a perpetual absence of home.

Selected Diptychs

These diptychs are comprised of photographs taken in Germany and edited in a way that attempts to address my complicated and critical position regarding Heimat in the series Critical Distance - a perpetual absence of home. (Click images to enlarge.)

Bleiben (2010), digital c-print, 37 x 81.5 cm, edition of five (+2 AP)

Zuhause (2010), digital c-print, 37 x 81.5 cm, edition of five (+2 AP)

Zurücklassen (2009), digital c-print, 37 x 81.5 cm, edition of five (+2 AP)

Anlegen (2007), digital c-print, 37 x 81.5 cm, edition of five (+2 AP)

Erkunden (2008), digital c-print, 37 x 81.5 cm, edition of five (+2 AP)

Im selben Boot (2008), digital c-print, 37 x 81.5 cm, edition of 5 (+2 AP)

Entstellt (2009), digital c-print, 37 x 81.5 cm, edition of five (+2 AP)

Nicht plakatieren! (2010), digital c-print, 37 x 81.5 cm, ed. of 5 (+2 AP)

Fluchtwege (2007), digital c-print, 37 x 81.5 cm, edition of five (+2 AP)

Alltag (2007), digital c-print, 37 x 81.5 cm, edition of five (+2 AP)

Zumutung (2010), digital c-print, 37 x 81.5 cm, edition of five (+2 AP)

Unbekannt (2010), digital c-print, 37 x 81.5 cm, edition of five (+2 AP)

Selected single images from "Critical Distance"

These single images function as punctuations within the syntax of Critical Distance, providing rhythm and pause. The images, taken at airports and in planes, depict the places that are most removed from any form of Heimat or utopian imaginary. They are generic places masquerading a sense of comfort, familiarity and security. (Click images to enlarge.)

Anderes Deutschland (2010), digital c-print,
37 x 48 cm, edition of five (+2 AP)

Untitled (2010), digital c-print,
37 x 48 cm, edition of five (+2 AP)

Über den Wolken (2008), digital c-print,

37 x 48 cm, edition of five (+2 AP)

Lucky People (2010), digital c-print,

37 x 48 cm, edition of five (+2 AP)

Untitled (2008), digital c-print,

37 x 48 cm, edition of five (+2 AP)

Favorite Place (2008), digital c-print,

37 x 48 cm, edition of five (+2 AP)

Untitled (2008), digital c-print,

37 x 48 cm, edition of five (+2 AP)

Untitled (2008), digital c-print,

37 x 48 cm, edition of five (+2 AP)

Miles (2008), digital c-print,

37 x 48 cm, edition of five (+2 AP)

Golden (2010), digital c-print,

37 x 48 cm, edition of five (+2 AP)

Selected Triptychs

Please find below a selection of the triptychs from my series "Critical Distance - a perpetual absence of home"; see also previous post for more information:

Belonging (2010), digital c-print, 37 x 115 cm, edition of five (+2 AP)

Another Story (2010), digital c-print, 37 x 115 cm, edition of five (+2 AP)

Contested (2010), digital c-print, 37 x 115 cm, edition of five (+2 AP)

Good Homes (2009), digital c-print, 37 x 115 cm, edition of five (+2 AP)

yet to be titled (2010), digital c-print, 37 x 115 cm, edition of five (+2 AP)

Engineered Desire (2009), digital c-print, 37 x 115 cm, edition of five (+2 AP)

yet to be titled (2010), digital c-print, 37 x 115 cm, edition of five (+2 AP)

Old World (2010), digital c-print, 37 x 115 cm, edition of five (+2 AP)

yet to be titled (2010), digital c-print, 37 x 115 cm, edition of five (+2 AP)

What Place? (2009), digital c-print, 37 x 115 cm, edition of five (+2 AP)

"Critical Distance" almost completed

Initially and foremost conceived as a book project, I am now almost finished editing my images of Critical Distance - a perpetual absence of home also into exhibition-ready works. It has been a four-year long process, and I am excited but also anxious about reaching the final stretch.

framed photo / installation view

I have produced a number of triptychs, diptychs and single images for this "gallery format" of the series. The triptychs consist of images taken in the US, reflecting on my state-side quasi "triple identity" and contemplating the location, significance and meaning of Heimat (home/land). The diptychs, on the other hand, are edited together from images I took in Germany and are often more polemical about the politics of belonging, representation and the writing of history - from the perspective of this East German. I envision the triptychs and diptychs to hang in a somewhat interchanging sequence, interrupted occasionally by single images, positioned below or above (see sketch below), that depict views from or of planes and airports.

installation sketch - click to enlarge

In the next few days, I will introduce here the majority of these new works. Please feel free to comment and critique them. Meanwhile, I hope to find opportunities to exhibit the full series. Excerpts could be seen in two small exhibitions in Germany last fall (see previous blog entries).

If you would like to get in touch with me regarding Critical Distance, you can e-mail me here. If you are interested in acquiring works from this series, please contact me or Galerie Vahinger (Germany).

Also, I am still looking for a publisher for the book version of Critical Distance. It will probably undergo another edit before it (hopefully) will become available as printed matter. Copies of the self-published limited edition are no longer available.

Reflections: Economy

The magazine Reflections included a number of individual images of mine, all culled from recent projects, in their "Economy" issue under the heading "Money and Morals after the Crash" this spring (just out). It is published by the Yale Divinity School (New Haven, CT), and I have to admit that I had reservations--as an atheist--to contribute my images to a religious publication. But the editor, Ray Waddle, seemed genuinely enthusiastic about my work, and I was certainly persuaded by their critical approach to "free-wheeling" capitalism. You can find Waddle's column From the Editor: Currencies here. Unfortunately, the final selection of essays and papers in this issue couldn't quite live up to my expectations, but its a start in terms of critically reflecting on Capitalism. And I'm certainly glad that I am not, for once, preaching to the choir. Pun intended.

What's missing in this picture?

Okay, I will have to vent a little in this post, hoping for some catharsis.

Having gone through the recent chain of 20th anniversary events in respect to Germany, I often feel like I have been looking at two of these search pictures one can often find in the puzzle section of papers or magazines: They appear to be identical, but one picture is missing a couple things original to the first image. The problem: What's missing in the picture? It might be a hat, a bird, or a flower. However, when it comes to historical events, we are often presented with the faulty image as the original. It's often an image reduced to what is historically, politically and culturally convenient. Claiming the original as the complete and more true picture is often ignored or characterized as the fabrication of a wild imagination.

20 years after the first and last truly democratic Volkskammer election in the GDR (March 19th, 1990) that brought to a disheartening end a few months of revitalized utopian hopes in that eastern part of the country, big survey (art) exhibitions about those past events and their fall-out have proven to be equally disappointing. Most curatorial strategies and also the individual works included may have considered and talked about East Germans, but were not by East Germans - it's the old issue of the other--in this case the other German--as being silent and silenced (see also the book Representing East Germany since Unification by Paul Cooke, 2005). The people who were THERE and most affected, then and now, are curiously missing in today's debates about THERE, or shall we say OVER THERE.

It is frustrating for someone--yes, like me--who has been trying in his/her work, over the years, to come to terms with East Germany/the GDR, its form of socialism and the events that started in the fall of 1989. Of course, I don't represent East Germans, far from it, but at least my work is a voice--or picture--that's more representative than the western-dominated chorus that we have been served in these recent exhibitions, a phenomena we already know all too well from the cinematic genre, with films like "Good-bye Lenin" (Wolfgang Becker, 2003) or "The Lives of Others" (Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, 2006). And to clarify: I argue for a genuine plurality of voices, meaning the full inclusion of East German ones, and not, as some might want to interpret my remarks, as the exclusion of the Western contributions.