The White Male Complex, No.1

The White Male Complex, No.1

Thomas Eller, DETEXT, Adib Fricke, Mike Kelley, Bruce Nauman, Walter Robinson, Felix Schneeweiss,

Superman, Markus Voit, Clemens Wilhelm

SAVVY ContemporaryRichardstraße 43/44

12055 Berlin-Neuköllnwww.savvy-contemporary.com

THE WHITE MALE COMPLEX, No.1

Sam Rose

Self-consciousness as a term in the English language conveys a deeply ambiguous notion of the self. Derogatory at first, it still denotes „consciousness“ of the self as a scrupulous-ly intellectual trait. “Selbstbewußtsein” in German is most commonly translated as self-con-fidence and, only in philosophical parlance, comes to mean: “to be conscious of the self”. Before going into too much philosophical debate however, one could safely say that the self needs to connect with an “exterior purpose” in order to gain “identity”. The exterior pur-pose can be that of a group which one wants to belong to or, by reason of social pres-sure, is identified with. In any case, identity is a social construct that can mean both, vice or virtue. However it is always political. Now after decades of identity politics in the arts and culture at large, as a white heterosexual male – how can one not be “self-conscious”?!That was the initial observation, which led to this exhibition. For artists like Felix Schneeweiss, Clemens Wilhelm and Markus Voit questions of the self and identity may not be front and center. However they are still at the core of their respective practices. Schneeweiss who occasionally works as a fashion model and has created his own fashion label as artwork, basically asserting himself in a world where branding increasingly replaces content. His assertive ego strategies however don’t seem to overwhelm a sound sense of self. Instead of “crowning” himself (as any ego-inflated self-entrepreneur would have), he discards his insignia in a quite literally tarred installation of crowns (with a bag of feathers). Theweleit’s “Book Of Kings” immediately comes to mind, in which the author states that a ”king’s complex” is at the core of every artistic produc-tion, which is always based on sacrificing (or cannibalizing) the female. Felix’s work side-steps the narcissistic neuroses of artists that Theweleit talks about and opens uncharted territory. The relation with the female is thematic (and problematic) in Clemens Wilhelm’s video installation “Read me”. Visiting quite a few Chinese palm readers, the artist gets a surprisingly uniform reading of his luck with women, albeit with what appears to be a culturally biased approach to male-female relationships. What is very compelling about this work is its matter-of-factly pre-sentation that is full of humanly humor and which, refreshingly, sets it apart from other artworks that utilize fortune-tellers plainly for the artist’s self-aggrandization. Clemens’ work instead risks a double misunderstanding: that of his relationships with women and of a Chinese cultural context that is not his own. Also not interested in “his own” appears to be the work by Markus Voit, which blurs the boundary between the socially and the sexually acceptable. “Sometimes my balls feel like tits” is one of his favorite artworks. What the f### is that? – His work can be profoundly embarrassing leaving the viewer in a state of unresolvable ambiguity from which there appears to be no escape. Sexual identity?! – To hell with it, is what his work seems to say (which apparently is by no means auto-biographical). What all three artists have in com-mon is not only reluctance, but a refusal to construct a “solid” male identity. How that can be a problem is the subject of DETEXT’s music video. In collaboration with Mendetz, a Spanish band, DETEXT created a pop song from spam emails advertising Viagra. “Half solid” doesn’t do it – the song says, more than hinting towards a male performance anxiety that is being exploited by spammers. The video’s upbeat pop ironically overlays the pressure of a “phallic crisis” that honestly has inflicted even the best of men at times. In that same line are the works by Walter Robinson who, in his artistic work, has always been drawn to cultural icons of American pop

self-aggrandization, but as recognition of the other. This exhibition strives to open a door, collect information for an anamnesis of the state of the white male complex. This is a first step into a direction that casts more light on one of the most obscure cultural pockets of today. The aim is to better understand the complexities and ulti-mately become a good partner in fruitful cultural dialogue.

culture. Except his work is devoid of irony and an unadultered praise of (the naked) woman, sex and all other good things, as Walter never tires to state in his elegantly ironic manner. Painting images from Penthouse magazine of the models’ intent gazes actually transpires both, his deep appreciation of the female (and his unflinching desire for it) and a knowingly refined cultural distance.The two pillars of the exhibition are the two most notoriously self-conscious artist of our time, Bruce Nauman on one side of the spectrum and Mike Kelley on the other. Mike Kelley must have been a tortured soul and his cultural impact originates right from there. Human relation-ships are the main concern of his work and they are being played out using sometimes infantile objects like teddy bears and stuff. A fact, or rather an observation of a fact, that ties in with Theweleit’s theory of man as not being born completely (nicht ganz zuende geboren). A fact, in which Theweleit sees the reason for all kinds of male self-fortification strategies. Which actu-ally might be the reason for Kelley’s long flirt with the Superman story. Superman, who only became who he was, because he lost his family twice. First when Krypton exploded and second, when his earthly foster family was killed – a trauma that can only trigger a neurotic response. To (psychologically) undo the harm that was inflicted upon himself, the superhero goes on a quest to save the world and therefore cannot have any earthly relationships – which of course is a quotidian definition of tragedy and also divides the world into good and evil. A disastrous concept as we had to learn in recent history! On the other side of the spectrum is Bruce Nauman, who doesn’t know the difference between good and evil. In fact he completely dismisses these notions. Instead he courageously tossed aside “everything” and retreated to the studio, because, as he says, what the artists does in his studio must be art. Tautological strategies of course are just another way to dissuade fate to strike. Rendering one_”self” not as person, but as vessel for art is a noble cause, but no good as an apotropaeic strategy. As much as Nauman wants to convince the viewer that his is a cool endgame in art – all is a side note to a book that is no longer valid. As much as Nauman wants us to believe that anything can be matter-of-fact, by the same token he does not spare any effort to assert himself, if only as an agent, in a zero-sum game of the eternal return of ever the same.Tautology is also the forte of Adib Fricke, whose Wittgensteinian engagement with language has produced a lot of “suspended” sense. Coining new words of no particular meaning, but as vessels for whatever energy that could invade the terms and make tools or weapons of them, is an occupation that leads into the realm of language and power. By means of deconstructing language, atomizing it, Fricke’s work inadvertently reinstates the power of language via its sheer potentiality. Because this is what we do: We invade terms, furnish them with meaning and use them for our own purposes. It is Adib’s achievement to try and keep this process open, as much as possible. However this has to ultimately fail. It is a human trait to close open systems, because we can hardly live with them. And, if we can’t take it anymore, some of us turn ballistic. “Bring a gun to work tomorrow” (an early work by the artist from a series of phrases he col-lected from the public domain) is another male trait that happens. It happens too often and is an example of a fatal self-assertion by either desperate loners and/or misguided visionaries like Anders Breivik. Finally self-assertion – can there be any meaningful interaction between human beings with out the interaction of selves? Isn’t the self a pre-condition for dialogue? How can you have a dialog if you the other person you interact with does not constitute a self that you can interact with? Those are the kinds of deliberations the work of Thomas Eller deals with – self-assertion not as

The Idiosyncrasy of Reflexivity

Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung

One of the interesting things about learning a new language is the fact that by so doing, one is chanced to appreciate one’s own language from another, and sometimes even more delicate perspective. So, upon learning the German language I re-stumbled on and learned to appreci-ate a seemingly banal grammatical element in language anew - the reflexive verb - although I was already acquainted with the structural essence of these verbs in English and French. I had always been fascinated by verbs and their ability to convey actions, state of being or occur-rence, but it was the re-awareness of the reflexive verb’s capability of thematizing the subject and the object as the same that stunned me. Of course seeing this through a semantic prism it all sounds very normal, but if one were to extrapolate this reflexivity into the human sphere it suddenly dawns on one how difficult it sometimes is to simultaneously be in the position of the subject and the object, how difficult it is to be the referee and the player at the same time, i.e. being the agent and the patient simultaneously (properly reflexive) or when the agents mutually act among themselves (reciprocal reflexive). The normal tendency is usually to choose the position of the subject or the object, which brings with it a certain hierarchy and maybe a certain comfort or discomfort. On the other hand making the subject the object and vice versa alleviates this hierarchy and distance and might allow for a better understanding of the posi-tion of the subject/ object.Such is the case with The White Male Complex at SAVVY Contemporary. The triumphs and the flaws of the White male (just like the Black male) have been topics of discussion in various contexts of Gender and Post Colonial studies, as well as in contemporary culture. When Gil Scott-Heron released the piece Whitey on the moon* in 1970, it was exactly this complex di-chotomy of triumph and flaw he must have been trying to express. This magnificent and avant-garde poem, though important and legitimate it was as critic of the socio-political structures back then and today, still smacked of the venom of the Other and more so the aggrieved. And this clear role division of subject and object in critique holds true not only for race but also for class and gender… mostly with a perspective from without. Many intellectuals before me have toiled these fields of critique and elaborated on the vices and virtues of the White male, thus it would be inappropriate to delve with lagging knowledge into this terrain. So, when Thomas Eller proposed to do an exhibition on The White Male Complex and all the artists happened to be White, I instinctively agreed into this venture. Not only because I trusted on the fact that Eller will come up with brilliant positions (including works by Thomas Eller, DETEXT, Adib Fricke, Mike Kelley, Bruce Nauman, Walter Robinson, Felix Schneeweiss, Superman, Markus Voit, Clemens Wilhelm), but also because I was excited to see some proper and reciprocal reflexivity. We all know that it is relatively easier to judge from the position without, but when it comes to the self, i.e. within, there is a lack of distance for perception and analysis. Who or what is, was and will be the White male, when he is not defined by the female or the Black? Can the White male be the mirror of himself by being the subject and the object, the agent and the patient, the victor and the vanquished at the same time? These questions will be crucial in this exhibition.To stay in the allegory of language, the importance of nuances in expression, which come along with geographical and cultural borders, will have to play a role in this exhibition. Does the common denominator of skin colour and gender suffice to stick people into the same box and

* Whitey on the moonGil Scott-Heron

A rat done bit my sister Nell. (with Whitey on the moon)

Her face and arms began to swell. (and Whitey’s on the moon) I can’t pay no doctor bill.

(but Whitey’s on the moon) Ten years from now I’ll be payin’ still.

(while Whitey’s on the moon) The man jus’ upped my rent las’ night.

(‘cause Whitey’s on the moon) No hot water, no toilets, no lights.

(but Whitey’s on the moon) I wonder why he’s uppi’ me?

(‘cause Whitey’s on the moon?) I wuz already payin’ ‘im fifty a week.

(with Whitey on the moon) Taxes takin’ my whole damn check, Junkies makin’ me a nervous wreck,

The price of food is goin’ up, An’ as if all that shit wuzn’t enough:

A rat done bit my sister Nell. (with Whitey on the moon)

Her face an’ arm began to swell. (but Whitey’s on the moon)

Was all that money I made las’ year (for Whitey on the moon?)

How come there ain’t no money here? (Hmm! Whitey’s on the moon) Y’know I jus’ ‘bout had my fill

(of Whitey on the moon) I think I’ll sen’ these doctor bills,

Air. Mail. Special (to Whitey on the moon)

ponder about their joint complex? Or will a multitude of these nuances brought in by the Ger-man, Spanish and American positions give a clearer picture about this complex?Identity, race, gender are best dealt with a pinch of humour and irony, something common in the works of Glenn Ligon, who to a great deal looks at the Black male complex. Irony will thus have to play a role in this project and keep platitude and shallowness at arm’s length. While this exhibition is at first view about the White male and his complexes, it is also very much about all the others that see themselves or are positioned at the opposite end of the White male and their complexes. So, if SAVVY Contemporary is an art space for a critical discourse between the West and the non-West, it is essential to look at the West not only from the posi-tion of the non-West, but also from within the West, and vice versa. The exhibition project is not intended to be a platform on which fingers can or will be pointed at others, but rather one on which fingers will be pointed at the self as well as one another. That is exactly what I find fascinating about reflexive verbs, especially in English or Romance languages, which have the potential of employing a derivation idiosyncratically to obtain re-flexivity… just as in “self-analyse” or “auto-analyse”.With this exhibition, the White male finally has the chance to objectify himself.

Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung

Art director SAVVY Contemporary

DETEXT with MENDETZ

VI4GRA [SPAM]. 2012, song, video projection of junk emails4 min loop

Adib Fricke

Seven Ties, Version 1, 1991 with 7 suits by Hugo Boss, silk screen on silk ties

Walter Robinson

untitled (Penthouse), 2010acrylic on papereach 38 x 25,5 cm

Markus Voit

ohne Titel, 2012je 60 x 40 cm, gerahmt

Thomas Eller

THE selbst (sans), 2011Barytpaper on dibond, 165 cm

Felix Schneeweiss

let me coach you, 201027 crowns, tar, plastic sack,plumes, twine100 x 120 x 100 cm

Clemens Wilhelm

READ MEChongqing (CN) 2011. Video InstallationMandarin with English subtitles26 min/loop.

Markus Voit

ohne Titel, 2005 C-Print70 x 70 cm, gerahmt

Markus Voit

ohne Titel, 2005glas with plastic blow up doll33 x 12 cm

Thomas Eller

THE selbst (endgame) version 1, 2012Inkjet in Hahnemühle paper, dibond,50 x 90 cm

Mike Kelley

”Superman Recites Selections from ‘The Bell Jar’ and Other Works by Sylvia Plath,” 1999Video, 7:19 min

Supe

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, “Fü

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ann

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alle

s ha

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Bruce Nauman

Walk with Contrapposto,1968Black-and-white videotape, sound60 min

The White Male Complex, no.1

Sam Rose

„Is white the new black?“ was the provocative subtitle of Kelefa Sanneh’s article „Beyond the pale“ in The New Yorker Magazine, April 12, 2010. Sanneh, a journalist and music critic for the New York Times and The New Yorker concerned himself with a discussion that has been growing in relative obscurity since the mid-80s in the US:Whiteness studies is an interdisciplinary arena of academic inquiry focused on what proponents describe as the cultural, historical and sociological aspects of people identified as white, and the social construction of whiteness as an ideology tied to social status. Pioneers in the field include Ruth Frankenberg (White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness, 1993), author and literary critic Toni Morrison (Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Liter-ary Imagination, 1992) and historian David Roediger (The Wages of Whiteness, 1991). By the mid-1990s, numerous works across many disciplines analyzed whiteness, and it has since become a topic for academic courses, research and anthologies.Sanneh’s informative article runs through two centuries of semantic changes of the term “white” as a sociological signifier, elaborating on the processes of racial construction of whiteness.”

The field was opened by what James Baldwin, an activist and novelist in the 60s and 70s, called the “lie of whiteness”, referring to the history of disenfranchised Polish, Jewish, Irish and Italian immigrants. Until today the term “guido” is an anti-Italian-American slur used in the streets of NY, that dates back to those times, as David Roediger states who also wrote the seminal book, “Working Toward Whiteness: How America’s Immigrants Became White. The Strange Journey from Ellis Island to the Suburbs.“ Roediger: “It is not merely that whiteness is oppressive and false; it is that whiteness is noth-ing but oppressive and false.” “Whiteness describes, from Little Big Horn to Simi Valley, not a culture but precisely the absence of culture. It is the empty and therefore terrifying attempt to build an identity based on what one isn’t and on whom one can hold back.”He also tells the story of Charles W. Janson, a British businessman who came to America in 1793 and offended a white domestic worker by asking to speak with her master. “I have no master”, she said, adding, “I’d have you know, man, that I am no sarvant; none but negers are sarvants.”

Whiteness therefore is being established as a (negative) category of supremacy and of legal benefit before the Civil War. To be white in America for the most part meant not to be non-white.The 19th and 20th centuries also saw the rise of race theories. Craniologists were measuring skull sizes to classify the different races and measure “intelligence” at the same time. In this wake “scientific whiteness” emerged – a discipline that tried to establish a “Caucasian race” that at the time included most of the peoples of Europe and, later in 1911, also Armenians and Arabs. When slavery was abolished, poor white laborers in the South set themselves apart from ex-slaves by wearing brimless wool hats – the ensuing sunburns gave them the name rednecks, so the story goes.

The point is: Whiteness is a much an interest-driven construct, as are other simplifications of ra-cial identifications. Post-Colonial studies have disseminated the term African in much the same way, or is that so?! The difference mainly seems to lie in the auctorial position – who talks about who?

And current positions in whiteness studies describing themselves generate a different inward directed violence as exemplified be two proponents:Noel Ignatiev, a Marxist of Russian-Jewish descent is the co-founder of the New Abolitionists Society and runs the website http://racetraitor.org/ with the purpose of abolishing whiteness:“We do not hate you or anyone else for the color of her skin. What we hate is a system that confers privileges (and burdens) on people because of their color. It is not fair skin that makes people white; it is fair skin in a certain kind of society, one that attaches social importance to skin color. When we say we want to abolish the white race, we do not mean we want to exter-minate people with fair skin. We mean that we want to do away with the social meaning of skin color, thereby abolishing the white race as a social category. Consider this parallel: To be against royalty does not mean wanting to kill the king. It means wanting to do away with crowns, thrones, titles, and the privileges attached to them. In our view, whiteness has a lot in common with royalty: they are both social formations that carry unearned advantages.”Which prompted another writer with a Jewish and in this case Stalinist legacy to react. After revoking his political affiliation with communism David Horowitz co-hosted a “Second Thoughts Conference” in Washington, D.C. In the spring of 1985, however, Horowitz and longtime col-laborator Peter Collier wrote an article for the Washington Post entitled, “Goodbye to All That”. The article explained their change of views and recent decision to vote for President Ronald Reagan. David Horowitz, something like the American version of Thilo Sarrazin, draws a distinction between whiteness studies and other disciplines. “Black studies celebrates blackness, Chicano studies celebrates Chicanos, women’s studies celebrates women, and white studies at-tacks white people as evil.”If it would be ethically allowed to subtract the resentments from Horowitz’s statement one would deduct, that identity politics work for a lot of groups, not however, for the white male.

So what is the white male? – In Germany? The older history here is almost equally burdened by immigration however less signified by color than by faith. How many wars were fought in Europe over religion?! Enlightenment was a direct reaction and an advancement we still have to fight for. Because it seems that in recent history we have forgotten the lessons from the various “tolerance edicts” in Prussia. New immigration always opens new frictions. Conservatives in Germany for years were carrying on a discussion asking to implement a German “Leitkultur” (leading cultural policy). With the absence however of any content to fill the term with, the discussion collapsed under it’s own weight. Leaving the space wide open, or should we say “white” open – for, as we know now, “white” has no properties but is just a screen to project onto.

The history of maleness in Germany can also be viewed through a psycho-cultural analytical “methodology” as developed by Klaus Theweleit. He wrote his dissertation “Freikorpsliteratur und der Körper des soldatischen Mannes” about Freikorps narratives, a sub-literature pro-duced by pre-fascist paramilitaries organized in Freikorps, who, during the early Weimar republic, had fought external or internal enemies. In academia only few historians had read

and analyzed this literature before Theweleit. His book Männerphantasien (1977); translated as Male Fantasies (1987), a study of the fascist consciousness in general and the bodily experi-ence of these former soldiers in particular, easily detected in their hate-filled, near-illiterate books, was well received. Theweleit used Wilhelm Reich, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari for his basic theory, but also empirical research, especially by Erhard Lucas, the leading German left-wing historian of the Weimar Republic unrest.Focusing on the construction of maleness through bodily evidence, Theweleit was identifying an array of tropes like: Körperpanzer, body armor – the creation of any kind of physically combative body type through either military training, disciplinary measures, or gear including the contemporary busi-ness suit.The Körperpanzer’s purpose is expressly to compensate the short-coming of an “incomplete birth”. The “nicht-zuende-geborenen” men develop either vampyristic (as artists), sadistic (as soldiers) or messianic traits (as terrorists like Anders Breivik). The super hero is another one of those tropes wherein the male proponent is pushed into his profoundly neurotic existence by the loss of all meaningful emotional attachments to family or spouse. The emotional detachment is compensated by an exaggerated sense of duty towards the other that justifies just about any fathomable deed.

In his “Buch der Könige” (book of kings) Theweleit describes a plentitude of male aggrandiza-tion strategies, artistic and not, that according to him are often based on a sacrifice of one ore more females – a trope that is based on the myth of Orpheus and Euridice. At the core of all this, according to Theweleit’s feminist theory, lies a particularly male fear of losing oneself, either dissolving in emotional relations with women, hence the self-fortification. Ill-directed ego energies are the source for tragedy, war and disaster. Or as Klaus Heinrich, professor of scienc-es of religion in Berlin, put it in the 1960: Emancipation is not something that only women need.

The time when the white heterosexual male commanded all the power is ceding. In the words of Kelefa Sanneh: “Roediger and Painter are right to remind us that whiteness was built over cen-turies on a foundation of deceit and confusion and disguised political imperatives. But neither seems fully to grasp the ways in which this artificial category has, over the year, come haltingly to life. Yes, whiteness is a social construct, and not … a biological essence – but then so, too, is every collective identity. It’s getting easier to talk about “white culture”, maybe even white politics… . In the Obama era – the Tea Party era – whiteness is easier to see than ever before, which means it’s less readily taken for granted. If invisibility is power, then whiteness is a little less powerful than it used to be.”

The exhibition “The White Male Complex, no.1” is one of many to come that explores the pitfalls of “male whiteness” or “white maleness” in the practice of contemporary male (and eventually female) artists. The search is for failed and successful efforts on creating identities, be it political, philosophical, sociological, and sexual or by any other means of exerting oneself as a “white male”.

More information on the artists:

Thomas Eller

‘We admire the unique, then we reproduce it: faithfully, fatuously, faithlessly, fortuitously. Who and which and where may be the real McCoy, those are uneasy questions. With fancy foot-work we may fight rearguard actions to hold the natural at arm’s length from the artificial and keep the one-of-a-kind out of the clinch of the facsimile, but the world we inhabit is close with multiples.’ (Hillel Schwartz)Eller’s figures address this desire for uniqueness, whilst simultaneously being resigned to its impossibility. He asserts the power of the image and erodes its original source in a single state-ment. The loss of the image’s traceable ancestry sets it free; the self is no longer about identity, if identity is understood as ‘the same’. Eller has argued, through his alter ego, Sam Rose that the self has no image and no speech, and that it cannot be communicated, save through a relation-ship with the ‘other’. If the self is not the ‘I’, then any image chosen to represent it must function in the manner of a ‘placeholder’; it posits a presence that, according to the French philosopher Jean-Francois Lyotard, is ‘unpresentable’. Here, radically altered in it’s meaning, the self is reduced to a picture that floats without destination. And once the self becomes thus divided, it replicates into copies without end. The sober ‘double-agents’ sent out by the artist to populate art galleries and public spaces worldwide appear in conservative dark suits, Usually, the monochrome figures appear to strike no defined pose, they simply stand in front of, or walk towards, the viewer. Yet, this formal at-tire, a businessman’s or undertaker’s suit (signifying trust and authority) has given way to a more informal dress code of jeans and T-shirt; sometimes the clothing becomes entirely indistinct, to the point of blending in with particular surroundings. Perhaps these changes may be understood as a relaxation of the strictures, the figures acting as decoys that adapt to the temporal, geo-graphic, or social circumstances, and sometimes a suit will not do.”

Nicolas de Oliveira, Nicola Oxley, 2008www.thomaseller.com/DeOliveira-Oxley.pdf

DETEXT

DETEXT is a shifting collective with members working between New York, Madrid and Berlin that uses language, lowbrow everyday texts and what might be described as media detritus as primary media. Interested in the ways ideology enters the collective consciousness, DETEXT is known for appropriating and re-contextualizing junk emails, online personal ads and the illeg-ible texts found in industrial food to probe the impact of mass media on social relations.Conceived as an insertion into official music distribution circuits, Detext’s work for this exhibition delves specifically into the ideology and sexist rhetoric found in much of today’s commercial music. A dance track written in collaboration with Spanish band Mendetz, Spam’s lyrics (as its title somewhat suggests) have all been culled from the artists’ collection of junk emails advertis-ing Viagra, penis enlargement tools and all sorts of herbal wonders intended to increase the reader’s manhood. Along with it, Detext is also unveiling the song’s promotional video, a text-based animation made with hundreds of ASCII drawings – a now outdated technique used by spammers to flip their junk messages past e-mail filters back in the 1990s.Praised by unwitting music critics as a “quintessential workout song” and a hit “to burn the dance floor” Spam was included in Mendetz’ new album Silly Symphonies, currently on sale at Amazon and iTunes.

www.detext.es

Adib Fricke

Word Vistas – Notes on my work with words and textsI have been working with words and text since the late 1980s. I love words, with their many layers of meaning and their visual forms. On small or large surfaces, printed in books or on banners, or painted on walls – my work creates lexical spaces. One can wander through them, lost in thought, observing the words and even touching them on the walls.My works’ visibility and readability can be freely encountered by the viewers with their own questions about meaning and non-meaning. The words are striking in their large letters on the wall. They seem – although from far away – to speak. What the viewers understand here is always right. The words and fragments can be scanned by the eye and approached from any direction. The viewers establish variable connections within the multilayered compositions. Everyone reads something different. The color I use in some works renders the words spectacular. They create a stir and enter into a contrasting relationship with their surroundings. The perspective distortion in certain recent works is a means of focusing spatial perception and causing the words to hover, both literally and figuratively. For an author, words and sentences communicate statements through which something is con-veyed. Central to me as an artist is the openness of the word-works to their viewers. Thematic statements are the impulse to begin a work, to plunge into a world of meaning whose imme-diacy disappears in the working process. Despite the suspension of meaning and the departure from the origin of the textual material, the characteristic style of the speaking subject remains. Sometimes more visible than before.My work to date can be divided into three cycles:– The current works, which are bracketed together under Public Words and are based on digi-tal text collections. I collect texts on defined concepts and fragment them. The artworks grow out of these fragments.– The Word Company, the business through which I produced and distributed meaningless ne-ologisms (protonyms) from 1994 to 2004. The trigger effect was truly achieved here when the works, such as ONTOM and QUOBO, shown in exhibitions also became the exhibition titles, or when QUIVID was commissioned as the name for Munich’s percent for art program. – the antonym of synonym is antonym, a separate work that has in retrospect become the over-all term for my experimental text and word works from 1988 to 1994 in which I programmed random generators, as in Leonardo da Vinci’s Smile, or published 30 advertisements for myself as an artist, as with AdibProp, in various contexts.

http://adibfricke.com/blog/word-vistas/

Mike Kelley

A critic and curator, Kelley writes for art and music journals and has organized numerous exhi-bitions incorporating his own work, work by fellow artists, and non-art objects that exemplify aspects of nostalgia, the grotesque, and the uncanny. His work questions the legitimacy of “nor-mative” values and systems of authority, and attacks the sanctity of cultural attitudes toward family, religion, sexuality, art history, and education. He also comments on and undermines the legitimacy of the concept of victim or trauma culture, which posits that almost all behavior results from some form of repressed abuse. Kelley’s ongoing pseudo-autobiographical project, “Extracurricular Activity Projective Reconstruction,” begun in 1995, is a planned compendium of 365 sculpture and video works, inspired by mundane yearbook photos and an examination of his own selective amnesia. Kelley’s aesthetic mines the rich and often overlooked history of vernacular art in America, and his practice borrows heavily from the confrontational, politically conscious, “by all means necessary” attitude of punk music.

http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/mike-kelley

Bruce Nauman

Confronted with “What to do?” in his studio soon after graduating, Nauman had the simple but profound realization that “If I was an artist and I was in the studio, then whatever I was doing in the studio must be art. At this point art became more of an activity and less of a product.”[2] Nauman set up a studio in a former grocery shop in the Mission district of San Francisco and then in a sublet from his university tutor in Mill Valley. These two locations provided the setting for a series of performed actions which he captured in real time, on a fixed camera, over the 10 minute duration of a 16mm film reel.[3] Between 1966 and 1970 he made several videos, in which he used his body to explore the potentials of art and the role of the artist, and to investigate psychological states and behavioural codes. Much of his work is characterized by an interest in language, often manifesting itself in a playful, mischievous manner. For example, the neon Run From Fear – Fun From Rear, or the photograph Bound To Fail, which literalizes the title phrase and shows the artist’s arms tied behind his back. There are however, very seri-ous concerns at the heart of Nauman’s practice. He seems to be fascinated by the nature of communication and language’s inherent problems, as well as the role of the artist as supposed communicator and manipulator of visual symbols.His Self Portrait as a Fountain (1966) shows the artist spouting a stream of water from his mouth. At the end of the 1960s, Nauman began constructing claustrophobic and enclosed cor-ridors and rooms that could be entered by visitors and which evoked the experience of being locked in and of being abandoned. A series of works inspired by one of the artist’s dreams was brought together under the title of Dream Passage and created in 1983, 1984, and 1988.[5] In his installation Changing Light Corridor with Rooms (1971), a long corridor is shrouded in darkness, whilst two rooms on either side are illuminated by bulbs that are timed to flash at different rates.[6] Since the mid-1980s, primarily working with sculpture and video, he has developed disturbing psychological and physical themes incorporating images of animal and human body parts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Nauman

Walter Robinson

Walter Robinson’s paintings from the Romance Series were first shown at Metro Pictures in the 1980s. The works are brilliantly-colored, deftly-painted illustrations that, as described by the artist, are “of people kissing, romance, beautiful women, strong men and desire...the act of putting paint on canvas was an intimate act suited well to depicting intimate acts. A little bit Neo-Expressionist and a little bit Post-Modern, the paintings represent a search for authentic subjectivity by an appeal to something hard-wired or innate.” Robinson used a “pop format” or “image bank” that seemed to be in danger of disappearing: the illustrations for covers of pulp paperbacks dating back to the early 1950s. Many of the paintings, as Robinson describes, are blissful images of “l’amour fou” or suggest an “erotic delirium.” Others show couples fighting or women resisting male assaults (typically with a small automatic!) in addition to images of comfort and protection. Robinson’s other exhibitions at Metro Pictures have included paintings that “took up the theme of desire and authenticity...using straightforward illustrative styles of painting”—portraits of everyday products, his small daughter, her toys, still lives of alcoholic beverages and spin paintings.http://artnews.org/metropictures/?exi=10923&Metro_Pictures&Walter_Robinson

Why isn’t Mr. Robinson better known for his art? Some of his early artist colleagues—members of the so-called Pictures Generation—are in the news this year. Next month, Cindy Sherman will have her second retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, and Mr. Prince, who had his own retrospective at the Guggenheim in 2008, and who is currently embroiled in a multimillion-dollar copyright lawsuit over a recent series of paintings, will be the subject of an exhibition at the Museo Picasso in Málaga, Spain.In 1986, the last year he showed new work in New York, Mr. Robinson wrote an essay called “The Quest for Failure,” in which he made a cogent, if half-serious, case for it. “With success becoming so common,” he wrote, “the only way to remain unique is to fail.”As the ’80s progressed, Mr. Robinson expanded his repertoire: greeting-card kittens, still lifes of beer bottles and Vaseline containers. “He did just about the most self-sabotaging work you could do,” Mr. McCormick said.A rising star, Mr. Robinson was writing for Art in America and serving as art editor of the East Village Eye, an alternative paper. “He morphs from one identity to another,” said a friend, Paul Hasegawa-Overacker, known as Paul H-O.He worked on new series—of photos from his honeymoon in Mexico with Bebe and still lifes of medicine containers. “I see artists painting still lifes and it’s the same fucking thing,” Mr. Robin-son declared. “Paint something you really want!” (He’s been painting burgers and nonalcoholic beer recently.)“I used to tell people it’s the kind of painting Manet would do, capturing something in one or two brushstrokes,” said Mr. Blinderman, who showed Mr. Robinson’s work at Semaphore. “Those paintings are all about desire and pain. They’re about stuff that’s not really romantic, and is actually pretty damn sad.” They can recall Morandi, simple subjects rendered with spellbinding, sometimes uncanny ease. They didn’t fit with the times.

http://galleristny.com/2012/01/art-net-the-life-and-times-of-walter-robinson-01242012/

Felix Schneeweiss

The reference to more or less existential everyday objects plays a consistent, important role in my work. The individual representation of social and personal perception, such as success and belonging, exclusion and failure, past and present, illusion and reality constitute fundamental cornerstones. With the choice of materials and shapes I translate this to a visual language. Schneeweiß – my own name as a label on suit covers, a print on a postcard, a signature on a baseball or a billboard becomes a game with my own identity and is a recurring element of my works.

http://www.felixschneeweiss.de

Superman

Superman’s origin (as well as much of his life) has taken on many permeations over the years, but the most recognized storyline goes something like this: Kal-El was born to Jor-El and Lara of the planet Krypton. Fearing for the safety of their son, the two loving parents sent Kal-El into space to Earth, where he would be safe and so he could later use his abilities gained from the yellow sun to aid innocent life. Crash landing outside the town of Smallville, KS, the child was found and taken in by a farming couple. Jonathan and Martha Kent would become Kal’s foster parents and raise him to the best of their ability. They named him Clark and that name would become not only the link to his humanity, but an alter ego that would help keep his loved ones from danger. As Clark grew into his teens, he found out more and more about his abilities and as a young man, he officially took on the guise of Superman thanks to a costume made by Martha from his swaddling clothes sent with him from Krypton.As Superman, he took on the mantra to stand for Truth, Justice and the American Way and he continues to uphold that statement in all he does. In his duty to uphold that honor, he has fought a multitude of villains including Brainiac, Darkseid, Bizarro, Metallo, Parasite, and his arch nemesis Lex Luthor. Although Superman seems nearly immortal with all his amazing abilities, he can be killed and has even technically died at the hands of one of his most perilous enemies, Doomsday.

http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0000196/bio

Markus Voit

My work projects certain moods onto the viewer, implicating him in both the creation and inter-pretation of the work. The viewer is the thematic center and the plastic material of my work; the clothing is the viewer’s second skin, simultaneously enveloping and revealing. The specific form that the viewer is to become aware of is of his own disunity: the I, the We, and the future self. I conceive of the body as a space of echoes; that which absorbs and reflects the personal, the social, and the subconscious. Above all, I am interested in elusive, liminal moments like the mo-ment of clarity when one becomes conscious of being noticed, or the moment in which someone stops operating. It is within these moments that one becomes conscious of himself as a thinker, and it is precisely in this space of self-reflection that his role as a perpetrator or his own con-templation begins.

http://www.kulturproduzent.de/cms/voit/cms/?page_id=4

Clemens Wilhelm

For this video Clemens Wilhelm asked four Chinese fortune tellers to read his left hand. We only see his hand resting on a table and the hands of the fortune tellers touching certain areas as they read his hand. Their four off-screen voices tell about his past, present and future – his health, success, wealth, longevity and love life.By translating the lines on his hand into words they draw a portrait of the artist. Clemens Wil-helm sets the outer conceptual frame which integrates the fortune tellers into the process of portraiture. By only showing his hand he leaves the rest of the portrait to the imagination of the viewers, which fill in the missing information.The performances of the fortune tellers are quite hard to categorize: on the one hand they are unreliable narrations, because reason tells us not to believe fortune tellers, but on the other hand they are a straight-forward diagnosis based on years of practice in this ancient tradition.In “Read Me” two hands touch and in this touch two cultures meet. The fortune tellers may be telling us Clemens Wilhelm’s life but they describe it from a Chinese point of view: their idea of a good, long, happy and rich life will probably be very different from the idea of a Westerner. So after all this is a Chinese portrait of Clemens Wilhelm.

http://www.clemenswilhelm.com/readme.html

IMPRESSUM

The White Male Complex, No.1

an exhibition curated by Thomas Eller (aka Sam Rose)

Exhibition: November 4 - December 4, 2012

SAVVY ContemporaryRichardstraße 43/4412055 Berlinwww.savvy-contemporary.com

director: Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikungmanagement: Saskia Köbschall

Many thanks to Sammlung Falckenberg and Sammlung Ivo Wessel for their support!

DOCUMENT ONLY FOR INTERNAL USE! NO COMMERCIAL APPLICATION!