Exhibitions that present a variety of different artists generally raise the question of what it is exactly that the different artists or rather their works/projects share. This is not about tracing similarities in content, though - as in the case of exhibitions that revolve around a particular topic. Asking the consecutive question for the cultural metaphor seems to be more interesting.

The very question centers on the kind of analysis of social parameters and standards (as well as their disruption) evolves from the (shared) symptomatic character of the different works. For art is - even if only indirectly - to be read - in terms of a cultural statement - as the symptom of a reaction to the current social condition and its standards. (But this is - if at all- only partly related to the reception of art, its aesthetic standards, and statements on individual tastes. And art, regarded as symptom, is thus not an analysis itself but caters for it. To use Slavoj Zizek's words: "and in the sense that the core of enjoyment that resists every attempt of interpretation persists in the symptom an interpretative dissolution probably doesn't put an end to analysis. This can be rather pursued by an identification with the symptom, an identification of the subject with this point that cannot be analyzed, with this "pathologic" quirk, which finally provides the only stability for its existence". (Slavoj Zizek, Liebe Dein Symptom wie Dich selbst)

The exhibition "118/24N" at the Cultural Center 'Minoriten', an old monastery in Graz (Austria) which displays a broad spectrum of conceptual approaches of the contemporary American art world foregrounds this particular quality of art. The exhibition is due to the initiative of an exchange project between the 'Grazer Kunstverein', W.A.S. (Women's Art Support), and 18 artists from Los Angeles. The American artists (Barbara Drucker, Liz Young, Ulysses Jenkins, Luciano Perna, Jeanne Patterson, and others) - curated by Anne Ayres and Sam Erenberg- are currently presenting their works at the 'Minoriten' while the Austrian artists (including - among others - Eva Ursprung, Veronika Dreier, and Erika Thü ümmel), in turn, will expose their works in Los Angeles next spring.

Many of the 18 artists use "found" objects and "everyday materials". Despite its long tradition in art history (occurring in Kurt Schwitter's Merzkunst as well as with Dada or Ready-Mades), here, this approach has been elaborated very poetically often embracing outspokenly social issues. Karen Atkinson, for instance, has focussed on AIDS victims in her work, which is presented in the monastery's cloister. She thus offers visitors as well as the victim's relatives the possibility of social interaction. She hung up handkerchiefs in various colors inviting the visitor to attach name tags and created a kind of public quilt that in the course of the exhibition will turn into a colorful social and sociologically-informed sculpture. "In every city which claims to have just a few victims, the actual number is surprisingly high", says the artist.
Dada and Arte Povera have probably served as model for Luciano Perna. The artist shows objects purchased at garage sales. He has crafted these objects into complex works but chose the garage sale as format for his presentation. These objects are - like an archeology of waste in its diachronic synchronicity - instructive about our culture's state.

Other works chose a more complex language. "This concern for a poetic and formal beauty that masks - or forms an entry into - a sophisticated intellectual play is at the root of minimalist based investigations by Sam Erenberg, Gerald Giamportone, Habib Kheradyar and William Radawec" (Erenberg) Sensibility (spirituality almost) are intrinsic to the works of the artists referred to above. They do not claim truth but employ preciseness in order to be logic and convincing. Thus Gerald Giamportone's c-prints are enlarged pictures of fine-grained pure materials (talc, graphite). The 'graphic' surface is not mere reproduction - thus not mimetic. It actually doesn't represent anything, since enlargement is at it's core. It therefore is not what it explains, although it pretends to be. But it isn't illustration, either, while still not showing symbolic or abstract traces. It rather seems to refer to the media-oriented ( it employs both print and photography) and consequently a consciously historic game with the concept of abstraction.

Other works, again, ( such as Liz Young's "Mobile Creed Units" are dealing with everyday rituals and obsessions. Some - such as Barbara Drucker's "Two Hair Balls", Anna Holmer's "Pharmacia Poetica", or Elena Mary Siff's "copying" paintings by Mondrian by mainly using natural substances - focus on the body and nature as source-materials. They consequently rely on the power of talisman and ritual. Sometimes this approach appears to be a gesture turning against modernity while actually stressing the narrative potential of epics and thus pretending to pursue analyses of identifications.
 
 

Franz Niegelhell
Graz, Austria
1997