She (It)
Sie (Es)
CR 91. Year 1987 / 1988
- EN
- DE
For how much less could she (it) hold him responsible for "life", make him stand up for opinions or claim any merits: his own doubt or the "innocence" of the work
The view through this emptied body shows a man's world. Images reflect each other, deceiving and distancing…. Besides raising the idea of the artist tied to his work (suggested by a spider behind the photo of Gerz), the work touches discreetly on the idea of androgyny.
Bojana Pejic 1992
The uncompromising nature of his works results, now as then, from a radical critique of culture, which Gerz summed up in a 1989 interview in typically metaphorical terms: “It’s all about life, not about cultural added value. Actually, art has little to do with good and evil. It’s not about the survival of culture, but about survival. Culture has taken us exactly where we are today. We have been the world champions in acquiring things. I’ve got a feeling the shelves are coming down on our heads. Today, what matters is how much of it we’re going to be able to recyle.”
Friedmann Malsch, 2002
Categories
Keywords
Installation
Metal framework, wood panels, green felt, approx. 66 m², glass pane, 140 x 350 cm, black paint, revolving door with 8 panes of glass, each 260 x 46 cm, pane of glass, 200 x 220 cm, mannequin, h = 180 cm, plastiline, clothing, shoes, b/w photograph, 200 x 255 cm, b/w photograph, 180 x 45 cm, slide projector, slide (text), mirror, 220 x 120 cm, black fabric, approx. 16 m²
The installation consists of an inaccessible triangular room. Its outside surface is covered with green felt. At its top is a revolving door, in the inaccessible interior of which a figure leans, looking into the room. The figure bears resemblance to Marcel Duchamp and is looking toward a large glass pane in the middle of the opposite wall. The black paint on this pane offers a view into the room by a transparent outline describing a woman’s body, through which viewers can gaze into the room and at the figure in the revolving door. A photograph of a spider web is visible on the right side. In front of it is a cut-out of a male figure (Jochen Gerz), whose posture alludes to a drawing by Marcel Duchamp. To the left is a door, which is concealed from the inside by a mirror that expands the room optically into a rectangle. A text is projected onto the wall adjacent to the door.
Sprengel Museum, Hannover.
Exhibitions
Düsseldorf 1988.
Bibliography
I: Kassel 1987a, Bd. 3. Düsseldorf 1988, pp. 110-113. Tel Aviv 1995, pp. 102-103
II: Groß 1988. Meister 1988. Red. 3, 1988. Red. 8, 1988, p. 14. Wieczorek 1988. Drateln 1989, p. 44. Pfütze 1990, p. 15. Pejic 1992, pp. 83-84
III: Unruh 1990, p. 100
IV: Katalog 10 Jahre Kunstpreis Glockengasse 1989, p. 46. Harms 1992, Cover