print May 1998

Carl Ostendarp

In recent years narrative has been finding its way back into contemporary art via installation, video, photography, and even painting. The New York–based painter Carl Ostendarp, for example, encourages narrative readings of his canvases. In Dead on it, 1997, one of the works in his recent show, a wavy brown line divides the painting into tan and white sections. Above the line floats a solid brown balloon resembling those in comic strips. It contains no words or letters, though, so it could simply be an abstract form or a stylized body part—a stomach, perhaps, or a breast with a large nipple. In

print September 1997

Ralf Berger

At first glance the gallery space seemed devoid of art objects, although you could hear an irritating, ear-numbing drilling sound. Turning to find the source of the din, however, you discovered a video monitor hanging below the ceiling. On its screen appeared an image of a jackhammer’s revolving shaft, thundering and shuddering as it sank into a concrete floor; hands, straining to hold the drill, appeared in close-up. Eventually it became apparent that the jackhammer was boring into the floor of the same gallery space, and that the actual floor was riddled with perforations.

Ralf Berger has said,

print May 1997

Judith Samen

The aesthetic of the Düsseldorf school of photography is by now a familiar one: distanced, straightforward shots of people, landscapes, cities, and museum interiors, subjects often photographed with such objective detachment that it can take a considered effort to determine whether the work is by Thomas Ruff, Andreas Gursky, Thomas Struth, or Candida Höfer. Although Judith Samen grew up in the Ruhrgebiet and studied at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf, her photographs manifest a completely different style.

As Samen freely admits, it is not the medium of photography itself that interests her: rather

print April 1997

Michel Majerus

One finds in the work of the young German painter Michel Majerus an array of disparate images and gestures—everything from colorful brushstrokes and blank surfaces to grinning cartoon faces and dark, morose scribbles. Given the abundance of visual imagery, it is almost impossible to form a coherent impression of the work. For his recent show Majerus installed thirty rectangular paintings in five rows so that one wall was entirely covered from floor to ceiling; he also installed four paintings in two rows, one above the other, on the opposite wall.

The paintings featured a face from a comic book,

print April 1996

Andreas Slominski/Ayse Erkmen

This show, which featured work by German artist Andreas Slominski and Turkish artist Ayse Erkmen, was the inaugural exhibition in a series of site-specific collaborations entitled “Zuspiel” (Pass to the side), to take place in Germany and Switzerland over the next two years.

The title of Erkmen’s installation, Portiport, 1996, played on the words “airport” and “Portikus.” Installed at the entrance to the building, the piece consisted of seven metal detectors placed between and to the sides of the six classical columns on the front of the building, so that anyone who wished to enter the space was

print January 1996

Frances Scholz

Frances Scholz’s recent show consisted of six large, nonobjective paintings in acrylic on canvas. The paintings were coloristically suggestive, with muted greens placed against luminous pinks and yellows, and their expansive surfaces contained narrow stripes running horizontally and vertically. Some of the larger areas of color were applied in translucent layers, creating where they overlap new shades, as well as an illusion of depth that is disrupted by the more opaque areas.

At the beginning of her artistic career Scholz was fascinated by cinema—in fact, she had aspired to become a filmmaker—and

print October 1995

Charline von Heyl

Charline von Heyl’s new works are difficult to categorize: neither abstract nor objective, neither symbolic nor narrative, they seem to take something from every genre. They also differ markedly from her earlier works, seeming to take pleasure in the act of painting itself. It has become almost sacrilegious to speak of pleasure in relation to painting. The correct stance is, of course, to doubt painting, to question, criticize, reject, yet to go on painting, expressing this uneasy relationship to the medium in the pictures themselves. This was the path followed by von Heyl and some of her fellow

print Summer 1995

Gabriele Dauerer

In her earlier paintings, Gabriele Dauerer depicted people, seated at tables piled high with food, who seemed driven by an inexorable greed. In her most recent works, the human figure has been replaced by abstract forms comprised, actually, of hangers that have been crossed to form shapes so that the original elements are no longer recognizable. There is no focal point in these works, rather the forms spread in all directions, covering the surfaces in an avalanche of brightly colored shapes. Much like the gluttonous people in Dauerer’s earlier paintings grasping for food, these forms claim the

print May 1995

Haralampi G. Oroschakoff

Although the 20th century could be called the century of refugees, the century in which those who lost their own culture were forced to adopt another, these refugees have left few traces of their struggles, their failures, and their doubts in the visual arts. While literature has relied heavily on such experiences, the visual arts seem to have been little touched by this question, except in recent years.

Today many artists attempt to locate their cultural origins and identity. Haralampi G. Oroschakoff has been on this quest for more than ten years. He was born in Bulgaria to a Russian family,

print March 1995

Franz Erhard Walther

In 1964, the exhibition of Franz Erhard Walther’s work in Fulda was greeted with great excitement. Today, 30 years later, Veir Loers, the director of the Fridericianum, remembers that exhibition as a “model for the ideas of minimal art, conceptual art, and concrete poetry.” For this reason he reconstructed this early exhibition, using mostly the original works shown in ’64, for the show he mounted at Kassel entitled “Sieben Werkgesaenge” (Seven work songs).

In a rectangular room with a window right off the entrance, there was a square delineated by a ten-meter-long string in the rear right-hand

print November 1994

THE SHOW MAN

DAY AND NIGHT, KASPER KOENIG is on the move. You see him at openings, at art fairs, on panels. It sometimes seems that wherever anything’s happening in contemporary art, Koenig is there—looking into new trends, shaking hands with old friends, ferreting out new artists. It is difficult to come up with anyone better informed about the international art scene.

Instead of pursuing a university degree, Koenig began his adult life at sea, working on a boat—a temporary diversion from his intellectual interests. After serving as an assistant on one of the Documenta exhibitions, he came to the U.S., and

print November 1994

Nobuyoshi Araki

Whether they depict women as fully clothed, showing their breasts, or posing on sofas allowing the viewer to glimpse their vaginas, friends, or adolescent girls with innocent-looking faces, Nobuyoshi Araki’s photographs are sexual. This intense sexuality even characterizes his Tokyo cityscapes, the views of back courtyards, intersections, and landscapes with trees or cloudy skies.

Though years ago Araki wanted to break sexual taboos with his work, he also wanted to provoke a confrontation with the officials charged with protecting public order, which he actually succeeded in doing several times.

Noemi Smolik