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| The concept of integrating the public, of confronting divergent contexts in order to have an image arise for a short time, has been re-created for the Kunsthalle Baden-Baden (Germany). The Title “Quality Weeks” refers to the slogan of a well-known sales promoter; Tupperware, that only offers its products in direct sales without public advertising, and that has thereby developed special forms for sales events. This available form is integrated into the equally available form of the art exhibition. The stage-setting transports the sales-presentation public into the arena created by the American artist Rita McBride for her own exhibition in the Kunsthalle. This is where Empfangshalle makes use of what is doubly available, to arrive at a third level of meaning from within the image as it arises; their own artistic product. |
The unsuspecting participants are transported into the context of art. Not as test persons, not in order to exhibit them as persons, but as part of the image, the sculpture. Thus, within the framework of “Quality Weeks,” they are finally “set up” on a white polythene sheet and are photographed on this almost immaterial pedestal, next to the sales presentation carried out by professional sales people. One discovers ambiguity, however, when the perspective is shifted. Is not the intrusion of the obviously commercial in the space of art rather a reflection of the interrelationships of the market, value and advertising as these exist for art no less than for anything else? Ready-made answers are not available… With their work Empfangshalle (“Reception Hall”) – the name becomes a program - creates a platform for our thoughts, nothing more, and nothing less. Jochen Meister |
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