in context of room, building and city

>Fritz Balthaus at Vincenz Sala Gallery, Paris

 

Already on the invitation card to the exhibition of Fritz Balthaus' a typical short circuit can be seen. The photo shows the flash battery of the photographer David Janecek. Sigmar Polke had signed the charger of his photographer in 1997 in a displacement activity. The artist's signature hot-wires the electric and copyright circulation, while both stay uninterrupted in the system of interpretation. Since both systems have no real points of contact and meet only in the interpretation of art themselves, they strike sparks there, without actually jumping out fuses to protect the system. The relays for value accumulation work well in the art world.

 

At the first floor of the gallery one finds a site specific lightinstallation. In the roadside gallery space settings and positions of found gallery interiors were transformed into works of art. Other work in the gallery canceled the line between interior and exterior. More "short-circuits" are seen at this exhibition at Gallery Vincenz Sala, Paris.

 

For example, in the upper room of the gallery. There, a lit 100W light bulb hangs from the ceiling, surrounded by mirrors and cardboards, arranged in a compelling situation. Their sizes, positions, distances and relationships create light and shadow fields at the walls, calculated in the manner of a hanging exhibition. When turning on the light, the light bulb produces a triple short circuit, calculated system crashes between gallery picture, gallery lighting and gallery space: light installation, light bulb, mirrors, card boards; variable installation.

 

In the showroom to the street, a gray tondo is attached to the wall, which was cut from the flooring of the gallery and brought into the picture plane. The remaining ground-mount shows in his section of the hitherto hidden parquet floor: floor/wall, tondo, floor cloth PVC installation, diameter 1.10m, variable, intervention. Space and image reveal their mutual dependence on environment.

 

The "Verte", from exhibition title, occurs simultaneously in three works of the artist.

 

The first "Verte" will appear as green spots in a lascivious female nude captured. The genre image was downloaded from the internet and the inkjet print was dissolved. The body liquits melt away the delicate photography. It now hangs discreetly, luxarm and easily overlooked at the rear wall of the small gallery office, is virtually sold under the counter: Verte, inkjet, fluid corporel, variable edition 3/1.

 

The second green is a chewing gum at the gallery door glass on the reverse, mirror-frame, again the same chewing gum was executed kneads: chewing gum, variable installation.

 

Green, in its the third appearance at the gallery, comes as Swiss brand of cigarettes, "Parisienne verte". The box is actually leaning on the sidewalk, at the window of the gallery. In its own internal spatial mirror image, the same box again. Outer and inner potential to simply take away, and as a mirror image. Object in a mirror image, mirror image in an object. Once the full pack of cigarettes from passers-by were taken, the empty space is filled and replaced by new box: Parisienne verte, temporary installation, package cigarettes, variable installation.

 

An attached bicycle wheel leans against the window of the deserted gallery. Document or theft of a bicycle or art ? wheel: front wheel of a bicycle with locker, installation.

 

Outside the gallery a typical Parisian street bollards is standing, which, like the gum, the cigarette and the attached front wheel entered the gallery as a concrete twin. The bollard is installed in mirror-image of his presence and placed in the exhibition space: bollard, site specific installation.

 

In all ordinary and artistic productions, there are loops, self-referential operations, recursions and difficult distinctions: Polke, or no Polke, space or light, picture or floor, interior or exterior, sex or masturbation, self-reference or external reference, who can still divide seriously?

 

Teodora Ramage, Paris, July 2012