| Georg Herold |
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-> Works in the Exhibition  Carmela Thiele Georg Herold – The Undiscovered PlanetThis will not be the last text on the work of Georg Herold. Or should I say: this will not be the last repetition of everything that has already been said about this artist? In ever new variations, we exegetes endow with meaning an object which shows that an objective interpretation of art is as good as impossible. In noting this fact and in prolix explanations of it, we doggedly confirm the very thesis that pulls the rug from under our feet – a curious game. What is the point of knowing that Herold’s works are about “real paradoxes in the continuous construction of reality in our consciousness”?[1] Can anyone imagine something concrete under that description? Here we are left high and dry by language, by all the ingenious associations of words with which we attempt to get a grip on everything, from everyday life and its problems to the riddle of the world and art, which continues to be recognizable as true art only in its enigma. Again, a paradox. We are surrounded by paradoxes, particularly in this terrain. In order to find our way out of this hall of mirrors, we must get to the heart of the matter. Let us therefore posit such a point. Posit one, dear reader! Easy Going Herold’s work is rooted in his obsession with the burlesque potential of language. Now that sounds tangible enough. The involuntarily comic vocabulary of East German officialdom furnished him with material – for instance, the word Abgangsverhandlung (departure negotiation). We asked the artist himself about this. [2] In the copy of an undated form, Herold confirms with his signature that his personal belongings have been handed over to him and that no accident occurred to him while under arrest.[3] “Abgangsverhandlung – it makes me laugh; I simply can’t get all ruffled about it”. The artist, born in Jena in 1947, refuses all dismay and navel-gazing. That he (then an art student) was arrested in the GDR, in 1973, and later ransomed by West Germany is no secret. For under the title of easy going (1999) he transformed that departure negotiation into art. From the linguistic dislocations of the GDR administration, Herold came to the theatre of the absurd: “Ionesco – he was magnificent!” The material, using roof batten as the neutral basis for metaphors, came after his expatriation and during his studies in Hamburg: to detach things from their proper meanings, to alter the context. Roof batten is no longer roof batten, but rather a carrier of meaning, a yardstick or framework for a sculpture. A brick is no longer a building material, but rather an element in a picture or an exhibit in a display case. Herold stages the play of words with things as a farce. He presents Collected Water Levels (1996) in display cases and stretched nylon stockings as a reissue of a constructivist sculpture. “I have strained to the extreme the hackneyed clichés of everyday language. In this way I’ve succeeded in giving expression to that bewilderment on which all life rests”.[4] This sentence was spoken not by Georg Herold, but by Eugène Ionesco. The quotation from the French-Romanian author is not a bad door-opener to the work of the great disillusioner of the German art scene. Transcendence is not wanted; as proof against it helps parodies of proverbs and word plays and onomatopoeia, which we also find in Ionescos’s absurdist plays of the 1950s as in the titles of Herold’s works. Thus multiples in the display case are called Prototypen (Prototypes, 2002), unentdeckbarer Planet (Undiscoverable Planet), Antipaint-paint and Fotografieren ohne Licht (Photographing without Light).[...] [1] Matthias Winzen, “Was man wahrnimmt, aber nicht weiß”, in: idem. (ed.), Georg Herold. What a Life, exhib. cat. Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, Snoeck, Cologne, 2005, p. 331. [2] The four quotations from Herold without further references are from an interview with him conducted by the author. [3] Picture of the document in: Matthias Winzen (ed.), Georg Herold. What a Life, exhib. cat. Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, Snoeck, Cologne, 2005, p. 330. [4] Quoted in the Afterword by Hanspeter Plocher, in: Eugène Ionesco, Die kahle Sängerin, Reclam, Stuttgart, 1987, p. 56. Catalog excerpt "Extended. Sammlung Landesbank Baden-Württemberg" Editors: Lutz Casper, Gregor Jansen, published by Kehrer Verlag Heidelberg, 2009 ^
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