Drawing (583) from THE BASIS OF MAKE-UP

"A spaceship shaped like a cut diamond transports water to a dried-up planet of rock. Someone hugs a tree and listens to the sound of the water rising up through the trunk. Gabriele d’Annunzio reads from his diaries wearing the uniform of a military chaplain: 'Where we are there is only one political way: to destroy. What is now is nothing, is mold, is death, is against life'. He is trying in vain to make contact with the aliens. The water contorts into a grimace when praised by d’Annunzio: 'So exquisite is water'. But it can do without false friends. D’Annunzio continues to talk nonsense, 'I was looking out the window earlier at my housekeeper’s chicken. If I were one of them, no one would stop me from laying my egg', raging further, 'Why am I only one man? Why am I not a whole army? My audacity currently knows no bounds'. The water prefers to hold its tongue." (From: arsenal, december 18)."

(2007) 

Zeichnung (584) aus DIE BASIS DES MAKE-UP

"Text under construction"

Doppelprotrait von Ueli Etter und Wolfgang Müller in der Galerie Eisenbahnstraße, Berlin 1986. Positives und negatives Baumgestrüpp. Flugzeugabsturz zwischen den Bäumen. Kormorane. Uelis Spirale aus seinem Kopf. Großes Fluggerät, Papierdrachen, Tröte. Punktwiese. 

(1996) 

Zeichnung (585) aus DIE BASIS DES MAKE-UP

"Text under construction"

Jack-in-the-Box und siamesischer Zwilling in positiv und negativ mit zwei Flaschen in den Händen auf der Straße. John Erdman grinst, und ich reibe mir die Augen. Ueli Etters Spirale aus der Zuckerdose in Laguna Beach. Auf meinem Hemd ein Teppichmuster. Viermal der gleiche Ast. Das Flaschen–Dreieck, die Flaschen–Geometrie. 

(1996) 

Drawing (586) from THE BASIS OF MAKE-UP

"The fatal triangle of projections BA - AC - CB: A loves A, B loves C and C loves A. A round dance from the film Die Basis des Make-Up with John Erdman, who plays a rug dealer, and his assistants Eckhard Rhode and Claus-Wilhelm Klinker, whose facial profiles cross the picture. At the end of the film, John Erdman declaims with his face next to a fender looking down at the floor: 'Through the rain an inflated piece of road, on which I seem to be lying with my face, can be seen. Unmoving lips in dust, with a slowly disappearing consciousness. Only noises. The only things that really remain for the amateur are helplessness and poor teeth.' On the lower part of the picture, a temple sinks into the slabs of a square in North Korea. The word LIBRA is emblazoned on its tympanum, standing for 'pound' or 'scales' or perhaps for 'library'. For ZDF, this was the 'worst film we ever broadcast', for me it was a rather successful personal ad." (From: arsenal, may 13).

 

(1996)

Drawing (587) from THE BASIS OF MAKE-UP

"Lavertezzo, September 14, 1994. Horrible constellations, a primal forest of denial and betrayal that seems to be killing me piece by piece. It is not just bungee jumpers that throw themselves from the Diga Valle Verzasca dam in Tessin, where a Bond film was once shot. The wall of water unleashed by the burst concrete wall would drown all the towns on the far shore of Lake Lugano. LAC – lake; RIM – rhyme, fissure, crack; LACRIMA – tears. Artificial Tears like drops of amber. At the top right-hand corner, one of these black drops hangs from a finger before the horizontally distorted facade of Chicago’s Claridge Hotel, while in the bottom left-hand corner, it is being tugged at with fingertips. Ueli Etter’s Babosa Gigante, a type of slug upon whose back the active ingredient of the consciousness-reducing drug Agony is secreted, climbs up the side of the vertically distorted hotel. In the mountains, above the clouds, you can hear the miserable cries of cattle and hippies who despair at their agricultural efforts." (From: arsenal, september 15)

(1999)

Drawing (588) from THE BASIS OF MAKE-UP

City of Angels, April 28, 1998. Hermes, as the leg-amputated messenger of the gods in the museum of Santa Barbara. The skyline of Westwood Village on a postcard from the 1950s gives a premonition of the past, dusty beauty of this city. Above, the lower end of Sunset Boulevard in Pacific Palisades up to the crossing Pacific Coast Highway in Los Angeles. The working rich thunder along in their helicopters between LAX and Malibu. A shuttle drives from Los Liones Drive up Paseo Miramar to the Villa Aurora, street number 520. The Eucalyptus trees imported from Australia are a plague in Southern California, because their deep roots take water away from other plants. The one drawn here is in the garden of the Feuchtwanger mansion. Morsels are served and torches are set up against mosquitoes. There is a long line of guests who want to have my drawings printed out behind the computer. Hélas, there's something for free! (From: arsenal, november 10).

(1999)

Drawing (589) from THE BASIS OF MAKE-UP

"Pacific Palisades (PP) in Los Angeles, 1998. The trunk of an eucalyptus tree in the garden of the Feuchtwanger villa at Paseo Miramar, crossed by the dark course of a dried-up riverbed in Utah, photographed on the return flight from Chicago. Furthermore, the lower part of Sunset Boulevard to the Pacific Coast Highway along the Santa Monica Bay. The junctions with the other highways are marked with squares. Two eye and teeth areas with mood lines (b = before) and (a = after) cosmetic surgery. A befriended actor comes by on his motorcycle. Tomorrow it's off to filming a version of the bible in Africa. Who or what he is supposed to act there? "No idea, but Italian production + Morocco as location = no taxes." This realism is reassuring. In the impassable forests on the hills, there are mountain lions, on their paths the Aesthetics of Failure. The system is finished, but it's too big to fail and resorts to threatening gestures. Utter boredom." (From: arsenal, october 11).

(1999)

Drawing (590) from THE BASIS OF MAKE-UP

Gaschurn, September 9th, 1995, the world premiere of the film Schlafes Bruder is being held in the schoolyard. All the actors have been once again brought together for the biggest open-air live performance of all time in full Dolby stereo. It’s raining. A Gala reporter claims primly and adamantly that we know each other from studying German literature together – What do you mean, when and where was that? At the hotel, an actor colleague shows me a “chute”, a joint you smoke by putting the lit side in your mouth and keeping it closed. We fall about laughing when looking at my telephone doodle, a sketch of the creator to accompany Michael Jackson’s poem The Dance from the album sleeve of his Dangerous CD: “This world we live in is the dance of the creator ... I keep on dancing ... and dancing ... and dancing, until there is only ... The Dance.” It sounds like Art In Ruins, 1993. In the background, the Fahlun mines and their transport baskets can be seen, against a landscape that shows people sitting on a bench. I thought I’d soon have stored all landscapes in my head and would no longer need to move. Time did as it usually does." (From: arsenal, september 16).

(1999) 

Zeichnung (591) aus DIE BASIS DES MAKE-UP

"Text under construction"

Dusche. 

(2007) 

Zeichnung (592) aus DIE BASIS DES MAKE-UP

"Text under construction"

Schweres Wasser. 

(2007) 

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