Location
LOCATION
The location is the private home, workplace and exhibition space of K-H Mauermann and his wife. A former farmhouse of local sandstone built in 1867, it is situated in Essen in the Ruhr.
After its farm house period, the various owners or tenants of the house pursued a number of different occupations, a historical context contributing to the themes of some of the exhibitions shown here.
The couple acquired the house in 2004, and in 2005 started their series of annual exhibitions, presenting works by contemporary artists of national and international standing. These are shown not in a gallery situation, but all over the house, in the backyard, garden, or on occasion in the cellar as well. Apart from contemporary art reflecting each year's exhibition themes, visitors are also invited to examine the sometimes trivial pictures and artefacts from the Mauermanns' or other people's collections and archives, thus exploring the borderline between art and every day life, art and kitsch, art and nature.
Exhibition themes were: ›Animals – An exhibition in a former butcher's shop‹, ›Death – An exhibition in a former funeral parlour‹, ›Victuals – Art‹, ›Flower Children‹. The exhibitions organised by Mauermann at his former studio site, a derelict butcher's workshop, were all related to the general subject of ›Long live the noble profession of butchers!‹
INTERVIEW Karl-Heinz Mauermann 3/8/2009 Essen
REMOTEWORDS: ›Civil Disobedience‹ on a private roof in an ordinary quiet residential quarter?
Mauermann: Where, if not there? Warhol once said something like »Everybody looks like everybody else and does the same as everybody else, that’s the way we’re going to evolve more and more.«, and also: »In the future, everybody will be world famous for 15 minutes.« Just look at those ›daily soaps‹, those grandmothers sporting the same track suits as their granddaughters, or the standardised gardens and front gardens in residential suburbs.
Fifty years ago, Warhol probably didn't realise to what extent his predictions were to prove correct. He would have been pleased, for to Warhol that kind of life spelled ›hip‹. Warhol expressed it along these lines: »Everybody should be a machine. I think everybody should like everybody.«
»Civil Disobedience« is a term coined by another eminent American, Henry David Thoreau, someone who sought quite the opposite of a standardised machine existence. He pursued individual freedom and independence by retreating into the woods near Walden pond, where in 1845 he erected a weatherboard shanty and escaped what he, even at this period, considered as a meaningsless mass society, where the majority of people led a ›life of quiet desperation‹. He states: »I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary.«
Thoreau’s aim was to escape standardisation, and he pleaded the right of the individual to violate valid legal norms if these represented injustice or infringed upon the freedom of the individual. In this he did not aim at revolution, and civil disobedience also rejects violence. Its chosen means are determined by the requirements of any given situation.
For me, in the first place, it is important, for people to be able to discover, to experience their individuality, their freedom. To be able to become conscious of their personality. This is the prerequisite of claiming one’s individuality. The ways to experience individuality may be various. Besides politics, social commitment, spare time in its classical sense - that is time to be freely disposed of, time designed for reflection - art may be another way. Here the content of the message is being made visible through aesthetic means. For me, the work by remote words is rooted in this context. What better place for this text than on this roof, in this context?
Karl Heinz Mauermann graduated in German literature and linguistics, philosophy and art in the mid 1980s. Since then he participated in a number of both national and international exhibitions. 1987 he received the Max Ernst Stipend special award for his video tape ›Aren’t we drawing such lines whenever we move?‹ and in 2006, with Frank Niehusmann for their work ›engines - a radio play‹, the Phonurgia Nova award ›sound is art )))‹.
Mauermann works in the field of conceptual art. He describes classification systems for a chaotic world, utilising not only the visual arts, but also crossing the borderline towards literature and music. In his works, he extends the traditional field of art work, for example, he also regards his work as a curator, the conception and realisation of exhibitions, as an intrinsic part of his work as an artist.
Machines, automations and communication are Mauermann’s recurring subjects. These he presents in serious scientific contexts, as well as, transmuted, within pseudo-rational interpretation systems. Frequently his works are ironically subverted and characterised his own brand of humour of the rather black and cynical kind. Working in context with specific situations or places, he creates complex works of great aesthetic appeal, in contrast to the simple materials used and their frequently minimalist manipulation.
