May 2, 2005
Galerie Guido W. Bandach
A short walk from Thomas' studio, Galerie Guido W. Bandach represents his work.
What a space, huh?
What is particularly good is the low cost use of materials, stretched towards the limit in outfitting a white cube: Particle board stacked in a brick pattern, painted white; the windows overlain with a sheet of plastic sheeting, slung over a wood grid, and the floors skinned with rolled linoleum sheets.
And now, the back room:
Here is a Thomas Zipp landscape. We learned that Thomas likes to work in certain modes (landscape being one), he encrypts his work with codes and hidden messages, that he uses irony and he addresses work to the sites in which the work is shown. For example, in a show in England, he adorns figures with cartoon bubbles that say "F__k England; or in other examples, he will abstract a bomb aloft over a landscape and encrypted words will indicate which cities should recieve a bombing. Now, we are assured by the gallerist (and by Thomas in his mild manner) that an ironic twist will divert any apparent aggression toward the (seemingly) benign needs of art to be provocative.
Another example: I left before May Day, but Joel and Phil had plans through the weekend. We recieved many invitations to attend the "celebrations" (from a safe distance, I assume). The general attitude was that on that day, the leftists gather in the streets to let off some anti-establishment steam. They burn cars and take up the cobblestones and break the windows. (I hope your alarms are going off in your head as mine did.) "It's no big deal.", they said, "They like to put up a show, it means nothing." We were told that even the police get into the act by dressing in black polished leather and sporting mohawks beneath their helmets.
Doug:
Aw, I missed the creamy stuff!
What do you think, is Berlin the NY of the 70's ?
All the best,
-D
Just to follow up (because I just can't let it go) there definitely is a difference between the EV 80's and Berlin today. In Berlin, many of the artists have had careers for many years (Neo Rauch, Daniel Richter, etc) and just came into view through art-fairs and galleries like David Zwirner. While the New York artworld is obsessed by youth, fashion and and the hype that propels it (read the decline and fall of painting http://www.artnet.com/Magazine/features/cfinch/finch4-27-05.asp ) there is little money in Berlin. (The German economy is at 15% unemployment). What set's many German artists apart for me is an inescapable sense of history and the belief that painting can be transcendant, a dialectic that runs through much of the work. Achtung Baby!
Doug you sound as if you have somewhat a pulse on the German, Berlin, Mesch. When you talk 15% you also have to take into account the lifestyle of that %, especially the range who fall into the catgorory X , and those who are artists, or other creators--not-too-difficult to fathom it's the employment benefit system that supports them (a structural adjustment that tips, I don't know, to "creativity", or, at least, culture, or passivity. US does not have this--thus the youth predator syndrome.
You say NY feeds of the young. You may also agree, then, that the German conservative taste has fed off the unification (which is still young--also the reason for the high employment)--not to mention the in-pour of conservatively trained reactionary artists (?) . I would like to think the whole world has gone back to the eighties--verbosely overconfident and lacking, but I know there is more to it than that, and more to making art and capitals.