Die Basis des Make-Up

Drawing (92) from THE BASIS OF MAKE-UP

"The painter, (P), with a brush for demonstration purposes in his hand and his model, (M), getting out of a VW Beetle at a time when that abbreviation hadn’t yet lost its civic charm and the word “Volkswagen” didn’t yet fill me with horror. Between the two of them lie veritable mountains of underwear neatly piled up and a road made of tea. The vision of a black glove was painted as a white after-image. Back then, that is, in 1974, we were convinced of the idea that a corny joke was able to represent the world and its relationships in the most reliable way. The Twilight of the Mockers only got going later, although I’d already turned down the offer of becoming editor of Pardon magazine in 1968 to study philosophy instead, which also initially led nowhere. Photographs were still raw sentences and ridiculous pieces of evidence. The language that photographic representations were capable of constructing only appeared to us as a possibility three years later, thanks to Alexander Rodchenko. But it was actually always crystal clear: I would never in my life buy a German car.." (From: january 19).

(1976) 

Drawing (40) from THE BASIS OF MAKE-UP

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) 

Drawing (251) 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) 

Drawing (55) from THE BASIS OF MAKE-UP

"A chest of drawers from the Gründerzeit rammed into the floor at an angle formed part of my 1988 exhibition Bismarck’s Shipwreck at the Zwinger Galerie in Berlin, which was about the Bismarckian social legislation and the fate of the crew of the battleship of the same name. The sawn-off part of the piece of furniture was hung on the wall over it, with the rustic metal fittings of the lectern from the Bundestag in Bonn on the ceiling. An image of Petra Nettelbeck in a wheelchair, drawn with a mouse using the still pixelated version of MacPaint from back then, who is turning around on the upper landing of the detested stars that lead to the gallery’s office space. The outlines of two caves drawn in black from the South Pole passage of the novel Arthur Gordon Pym by Edgar Poe. When the state demands your life and lets you go under, the game of democracy has reached an end. Sacrifices and solutions to puzzles about to happen than no one is interested in any longer. Too early, too late and off-point: the revolutions that take place without us." (From: arsenal, november 18). 

(1988) 

Drawing (68) from THE BASIS OF MAKE-UP

"A chest of drawers from the Gründerzeit rammed into the floor at an angle formed part of my 1988 exhibition Bismarck’s Shipwreck at the Zwinger Galerie in Berlin, which was about the Bismarckian social legislation and the fate of the crew of the battleship of the same name. The sawn-off part of the piece of furniture was hung on the wall over it, with the rustic metal fittings of the lectern from the Bundestag in Bonn on the ceiling. An image of Petra Nettelbeck in a wheelchair, drawn with a mouse using the still pixelated version of MacPaint from back then, who is turning around on the upper landing of the detested stars that lead to the gallery’s office space. The outlines of two caves drawn in black from the South Pole passage of the novel Arthur Gordon Pym by Edgar Poe. When the state demands your life and lets you go under, the game of democracy has reached an end. Sacrifices and solutions to puzzles about to happen than no one is interested in any longer. Too early, too late and off-point: the revolutions that take place without us." (From: arsenal, november 18). 

 (1988) 

Drawing (347) from THE BASIS OF MAKE-UP

"The diffuse silhouette of a US battleship firing a cruise missile at the start of the First Gulf War. A triumph for the Global Positioning System developed by the Pentagon, which ushered in the triumphal march of unmanned Fire-and-forget weapons. It had all begun in the Second World War with the Japanese rocket glider Oka (“Cherry Blossom”), for which the brain of a kamikaze pilot had to take the place of the computer. Appropriately enough, these manned gliding bombs were called Baka (“Idiot”) by the Allied forces. Only one single ship was actually sunk that way, the USS Abele in April 1945. Kamikaze pilots never got a second chance to make a first impression. As a protest against the rocket launch, three disgusted acrobats slide barefoot down the image’s internal frame on the left-hand side as if against a pane of glass. A Biedermeier chair serves as the clef for the resultant harmony of squeaking and thundering noises.." (From: arsenal, october 18).

(2007) 

Drawing (254) from THE BASIS OF MAKE-UP

"A religiously announced apocalypse, a ruptured sky shown on a woodcut by Albrecht Dürer. Figures in prayer with their backs to the observer who bow before a stylized house printed on paper towels and kiss the ground. To the right, a kitchen roll is presented as an offering; to the left, two poplars on a coal heap in West Berlin during the blockade. ADE means farewell in German, the A stands for Anfang (beginning), D for Dürer, E for Ende (end). “The beginning of the end” would be bragging: the beginning is the end. Organized religion poisons everything. It is “violent, irrational, intolerant, sectarian, allied to racism, tribalism, and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive  toward children, and ought to have a great deal on its conscience”, writes Christopher Hitchens in his 2007 book God is Not Great. Look out, progress is unstoppable: now we must praise the Wahhabi Saudis for wanting to allow their women to drive." (From: arsenal, september 18).

(1993) 

Drawing (574) from THE BASIS OF MAKE-UP

"A religiously announced apocalypse, a ruptured sky shown on a woodcut by Albrecht Dürer. Figures in prayer with their backs to the observer who bow before a stylized house printed on paper towels and kiss the ground. To the right, a kitchen roll is presented as an offering; to the left, two poplars on a coal heap in West Berlin during the blockade. ADE means farewell in German, the A stands for Anfang (beginning), D for Dürer, E for Ende (end). “The beginning of the end” would be bragging: the beginning is the end. Organized religion poisons everything. It is “violent, irrational, intolerant, sectarian, allied to racism, tribalism, and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive  toward children, and ought to have a great deal on its conscience”, writes Christopher Hitchens in his 2007 book God is Not Great. Look out, progress is unstoppable: now we must praise the Wahhabi Saudis for wanting to allow their women to drive." (From: arsenal, september 18).

(1993) 

Drawing (38) from THE BASIS OF MAKE-UP