Fabian Stech

The floor was quite weird and kind of used like a dance floor or a basketball field.

At the C/O in Berlin Oranienburgerstraße at Friday night the 16^th of march opened the exhibition of Bruce Davidsons Subway series. The dye tranfers pictures were published for the first time in 1986 and show the New York Subway in the beginning eighties.  Even if he began shooting the pictures in black and white it is the light treatment of the color pictures that stays in mind. The book was republished by Steidl and Aperture in its third edition. The party was in fact quite boring and only a crazy outlaw declaring Berlin his private city and attacking tourists at the Oranienburgerstraße changed the situation until he was taken away by the good samaritans of the red cross, but nobody has taken pictures. 

This photo of Rosa Meissner at the Rhon Hotel in Warnemünde taken in 1907 by Edward Munch was the basis for seven pictures of the “crying women” series. Munch worked his motives much in series of paintings in which he gives new expressions and colors to his paintings, sometimes over a long period. Even if this serial approach may not directly refer to the Kierkegaard’s book “The repetition” edited in 1843, it sounds all the same obvious that there is an analogy to Kierkegaard’s book in which he recalls his separation from Regine Olsen. For Kierkegaard as for Munch, the repetition is the ”daily bread”. In the photograph we’ll see Munch’s shadow looking right at the walking “Rosa Meissner”, his hand under his nose. This reference to the observer puts the relation between the subject and the one who perceives it, in the center of interest. The exhibition that is shown at the Centre Pompidou is to be seen at the Kunsthalle Schirn from the 9. of February to the 13. of May 2012.

This picture of a Djamel Tatah exhibition in the Chambord castle is the visual proof that contemporary art has become an obligation. You can’t even visit castles without seeing contemporary art. Even if the juxtaposition of the contemporary and the old is working as a provocation with artists like Jeff Koons in Versailles here in Chambord it is vain decoration of the void. Here in the Tatah exhibition it is perfectly integrated in the space. Art is loosing the touch of contestation, provocation, visual counterpart, fun or expression of everything that connects art to sensation or emotion. 

Memento mori is the title of the exhibition of Luc Ming Yan. Here you can see a young artist’s (17) work produced with chinese ink and a hand carved bamboo feather. The topics are focused on birth- death and the fight in between.  In the center of the exhibition is a cowboy staring at his own grave, ready to shoot but also surrounded by his enemies. Everything seems fixed at the coming end. Discover these cinematographic drawings at the basement Lib de l’U! Beside the exhibition was curated by Sarah Ning Yan and Lucas Stech, two young curators the artworld will hear from.

Was it like this, that Sophie Täuber Arp saw l’Aubette, the night of the inauguration in 1928 ? Theo von Doesburg had decorated this part of the modern amusement “cinébal”, a dancing, where you could see films and at the same time drink a beer or a cup of champain. As Doesburg put it, it’s better being in the picture and he designed the space as a de Stiyl  painting. But there is now  a kind of tristesse in these rooms designed to be crowded with people. You will never feel this emotion in the “bains municipaux” constructed by Fritz Belbo in 1908 in Strasbourg. To swim in this pool is like spinning back the weel of time for just one little century

That destruction can be art is a commonplace since Aristotle. For he proves the mimetic principle as a fundamental form of learning with the pleasure we have in seeing an image of a dead body. Quinceys “Murder considered as  a fine art”     destruction as art as does Bretons second manifesto of surrealism, where he indicates the simplest surrealistic action consists in going on the street  and shooting blindly in the crowd. In the 20th century Art, destruction becomes with Gustav Metzger a destruction against art itself and with Chris Burden a destruction against the artist. The impetus for this exhibition is Tinguelys self-destroying machine “Hommage to New York”.  In this work Mechanization as a whole, is an image of death and at the same time the overcoming of it.  But at last the machine did not destroy itself entirely the 17 of march 1960 behind the MOMA. At the Tinguely Museum in Basel Under Destruction shows artworks dealing with the theme of destruction in a contemporary approach from the 1990 onwards. It is remarkable how many artists in this exhibition want to destroy the museum like Liz Larners in “Corner basher”.

The musée Guimet in Paris has a new director since 2008, Jacques Giès. In january 2009 he announced at a press conference that a contemporary programmation would take place inside the permanent collection. (It was first introduced by Serge Lemoine some years ago with specially produced artworks at the musée d’Orsay) Until the 15th November one can see the pakistanian artist Rashid Rana and until the 13th December Chen Zhen. Much of Rashid Rana works are on pixelation of photography which he declines in different cultural and art historical purposes. But it is his sculpture at the first floor which fits the best in the permanent exhibition and in the abstract impact of the stone sculptures. The concept to incorporate contemporary art works for Rashid Rana but not for Chen Zhen. Even if he is one of the most important chinese artists it is not sufficient to borrow some art works from the CNAP to make it a coherent exhibition. Only „round table“ from 1995 has find his definite space. The idea to draw the contemporary public from the three steps away Palais de Tokyo and Museum of Modern Art, to the magnificiant collection and space of the musée Guimet is efficient, but has to be improved. But by the way, you can discover prodigious little things which perhaps you’ll have to reclassify as contemporary like this part of a khadvanga.

Lili was the personality that Tim Yip invented for his holiday exhibition at the MOCA Taipeh Museum. The best thing about her is that you can read her name from ahead and from behind. Like all good stories there is more than one way to tell them, but as often recognized the narration is a problematic approach to an exhibition. In a film identification is a good way to produce and use emotions. In the museum identification bothers the spectator.

The asian atmosphere in Ridley Scott’s movie Bladerunner isn’t something you will find in Philip K. Dick’s Book “Do andoids dream of electric sheeps”. It is a pure invention to place the set there and it expresses better then any other movie of the eighties the american fear of Asia. (Scott’s picture “Black rain” produced at the end of the decade in 1989 prouves the same preoccupations). It is always raining and you see a huge number of umbrellas in the picture. In the National Art Center building in Tokyo l’architecte Kisho Kurokawa replied in 2003 to Scott’s Bladerunner. Kurokawa issued of the metabolism movement of the 60‘s, build outside the wave front of his museum, a little building were spectators can secure their umbrellas, amongst others also Bladerunner umbrellas. Inside, the onlooker can choose between, postimpressionist paintings from the Musée d’Orsay, and a Man ray exhibition, both announced in english or an exhibition on calligraphy only presented in Japanese. The fact that there was no free press entrance made me focus on the umbrellas.