GERMAN

Artist discussion with Igor Zabel and Clemens Krauss, 24^th April 2004,
about the exhibition The Bodybody-Problem

Z: The title of the exhibition is The Bodybody-Problem. Can you tell us something about this title.

K: The Bodybody-Problem is a quotation of Arthur Danto’s book with the same name and the same named chapter The Body/Body-Problem. First of all it was a rather banal decision because I simply liked the title. But I’m particularly interested in the notion of dualism of body and mind – a very western concept indeed – and so this title seemed to me very appropriate even though I have a different approach to this subject matter. It is due to my background a rather natural scientific one. But anyway, titles – as for the pieces itself – are not too important for me.

Z: So you think that the concept of bodies and the way how body is constructed and also represented is an essential aspect in contemporary society?

K: It’s very important. For me it is very interesting to see what happens in society, what happens with the isolated body, the figure in the anonymous mass. And it’s very crucial how these pieces referring to these questions actually develop. My work starts with a collection of different sources of images, texts, notes, perceptions, investigations, sketches a.s.o. Then it depends from my decision, what particular moment I do pick out of this flood of information. It’s all about, of course, the flood of images and information.

Z: When you compile all this materials, how is your selection happening? Do you collect the material already with a particular type of work in your mind or are these just things that find your attention and you think they are for one or another reason interesting?

K: What I’m doing is basically what everyone else probably does: just to see. My particular task is then to make the choice. At the beginning there is my perception and the first part of the work is to choose those particular moments from the mentioned information, the images and texts. The way how I do it, what I’m finally taking and how I present and represent it is the way how my personal emphasis goes.
On the pin-boards I tried - of course as you can see also in a humoristic way - to reveal the process of my paintings, how my work develops and becomes a structure. And going back to what you’ve mentioned before about the idea of the constructed body. My major point of interest is to visualize the situation of the body in a contemporary setting and in the questions that occur through the paintings. Who are the people on the paintings? You don’t know them, I don’t know them. If you would know them, you’d probably recognize them. But so far they are identities without an individual identity, just blurred moments. I try to sort of visualize this situation, which is, of course, a very contemporary situation, too.

Z: I think this painting series here, Part of a Slow Self Portrait, is a work which seems to be a little different. Is there any particular reason why you have chosen this one. What is the connection with the other works and what is the connection of the different type of material.

K: The work on the pieces of the series Part of a Slow Self Portrait began in autumn 2002. I also had a show in Berlin in summer 2003 with this title. In this series lay the origins of the more recent paintings – also of those we have here in The Bodybody-Problem. The difference is that I then used only my own body as a starting point. I was painting close-ups of my naked body and then opposing the paintings to screenprinted canvases which represented more or less the layer of my own perception and investigation. This series came into being within a certain period. So lots of the perceived moments refer to that certain period in terms of what has happened at that time. I was then going back to what we were talking about before: the body/mind dualism. And I was playing with this dualistic conception: here is the body, there is the mind, here is the perception and there is the flesh, the organic body as a sexual and ethnicised and genderised moment. In terms of the materiality there has actually nothing changed.
The difference between this piece and the more recent ones is that I’m now just trying to do it in one canvas, to combine text and image in one single piece and to overcome this moment of so called dualism within the paintings. (And they just look good!)

Z: I think the painterly aspect is particularly important for you. As you’ve mentioned before you have these two techniques. You use silkscreen for the text and then you have the figures done in a very painterly way with a lot of material presence. Is this again a reference to this body and mind problem?

K: It is definitely so. One could easily ask me, why am I using paint? Why am I painting? Why not photography or another way of - let’s say - illustration? And so I have to ask myself: What happens within the paint? It is important to use the paint with the fleshy visceral quality which the paint actually has. Therefore the structured pastose application is the consistent use of the paint. I used to work with photography as well even within the same subject matter but then the different technique had immediately a different meaning. And if I would be able to sing I would just sing a song. But since I’m still a painter, I’m rather using the paint.   

Z: I want to say what my thoughts were when I saw these paintings and especially having the title The Bodybody-Problem in mind. I always see the groups of people and in a sense these groups of people are already the Bodybody-Problem. They are bodies in a particular situation. But these particular situations are not coincidental, they are somehow organised.  What kind of arranges them is a sort of one could call a social pattern, also patterns of power.
Another thing is of course at the same time the position of the beholder. If you observe them you can feel at once a certain closeness due to the presence of the paint but also a distance because they are kind of escaping the view. You cannot recognize them, at once, only from a distance.

K: These moments of apparent difference relating to closeness or distance are inherent within the paintings and I think very obvious connected to the way that they are textured.
And of course I’m not only interested in the figure itself but also in the interconnections between the isolated figures. Human beings are much more than just biological machines, they are thinking and emotional. What happens between us in society? There is sending and receiving, there is sexuality, there are lots of relations. Even though you don’t know who particularly is communicating in the paintings you feel that there is an effect, a conversation, a tension. That is exactly what happens as well in so called reality.

Z: What can you say about the text and the combination of text and image on the canvases?

K: The sources of the texts are important, of course, and how the texts happen on the canvas as a formal part. They are fragmented cuttings of my collection, from my archive which refer to the issues we are talking about: the relation of the biological human body and all the surrounding bodies. But I’m not a narrator, and it’s not, for sure, meant to be didactic. It’s still an aesthetic concern how the text appears on the canvas and which actual texts I’m choosing. Since the text becomes part of the image I’m also considering the – let’s say – style of the text, the font, the size, the character spacing and the particular colour. For example white on white – as the printed text appears in most of the paintings here - is almost nothing. Particularly in the more recent pieces the text became more faded. You can read the text or you cannot read it. This decision or indecision remains with the viewer.