2015 Grace has success

Constanze Schweiger, "Grace has success", 2012.
Invitation card for "Para/Fotografie",  Michael Part and Artie Vierkant, Westfälischer Kunstverein, Münster, 2015

"Grace has success."


Halfway to the self-made developer – while handling the prints – the artist steps into his bathtub. A cigarette is placed on the rim of the tub, the undershirt slips out of his trousers, something splashes. The soft comes and forms the hard. He wears plain-coloured cotton socks. In the morning all things are dry again but the socks are cheerfully covered with blotches. Lavender blue mottles and spots mingle on dark-grey. He states, “Sodium dithionite diluted in water induces a textile bleaching effect that causes dappled markings.” Disorganizations in the shapes of grains, smears and blobs make an adornment that is not caused by addition but by subtraction. The modern sock eludes from ornamentation. Here graceful traces represent a story accompanying the artist’s practice which takes place during the time of day when it is dark outside and others sleep. Exploited material and time – the resources of the worker – are not wasted. The composition is entirely left to chance. Thus an ornament finds its connection with man and world order. The audience is excited by the artist’s achievement. They can not accept the request that the piece should be worn. Therefore, the hard rises and forms the soft – the batik sox are getting framed. Now the artist can focus on other things again.

Translated into English by Nicholas Hoffman, 2015
Original text in German, 2012

2010 Olivia Giacobetti

As sometimes, there is a theme leading to an utterly tight bound composition. So tight that multiple accords and juxtapositions seem to fuse into one controlled sphere. Complete container or geometric volume – you have to inhale it and let yourself sink in order to get to the bottom of its obscure details. There is bitterness, a rarer and profound quality within a structure. There is green. There is powder and butter as in orris root. There are carrot seeds and filmy patchouli as from moist soil on roots. Carrot seeds and bitterness. Carrot seeds and powder. Carrot seeds and vanillized orange peel. There is sweetness. Sometimes bitter tastes sweet. This type of sweetness appears gauzy within floral systematics, and makes up for a clearly kinder feel. So as sometimes, a homely theme with its many seemingly recognizable components may lead you into the inner world of an imaginary object – a bubble or bobble or multilayer ball. It was a mistake to state that ... is a point it.

On Love les carottes by Olivia Giacobetti

In some other context a famous perfumer compared perfume to poetry, more precisely to "poems on souvenirs."

1980 Design Office

In the short story "Honeymoon Habit" Kim Gordon tells about one of her early Design Office interventions. The clients, an artist couple sharing one room on 8 Spring Street, New York, had commissioned her to change their apartment  As part of her art practice, Gordon – widely known as a founding member of the band Sonic Youth – added a small mirror and a light with a metal shade to the place and spray-painted both of them in copper. "With the two new items added to the apartment and painted a color that is simultaneously street oriented, in a defined state, and rich looking, the project will not be resolved until the clients buy a smaller refrigerator."

"Honeymoon Habit" was originally published in Real Life Magazine's 5th issue, in winter 1980. The magazine was founded and edited by artist, writer, curator, Thomas Lawson, and artist, writer, Susan Morgan as an intermittent black and white magazine. It collects significant early writing by fellow artists and writers, a loose clique of the New York artworld of the Eighties. In 2014 it got included into the book Kim Gordon, Is It My Body? Selected Texts by Sternberg Press.

Constanze Schweiger, Untitled (Große Neugasse 44), 2015
Part of Kim Gordon: Honeymoon Habit by Anne Speir and Constanze Schweiger, pinacoteca, Vienna
Photo: Thomas Ries

On the occasion of the 2014 show Design Office: Coming Soon presented by Gagosian Gallery at Fitzpatrick-Leland House, Los Angeles, Kim Gordon recounts: "Design Office began in 1980 as a way to practice art outside of the gallery system. The first projects involved friends’ apartments. D.O. was to be sort of a reflective intervention into the lifestyle of the clients. Objects and a physical change to the interior based on the personality and desires/needs of the client. The design activity was not meant to be well executed or look a certain way, have a certain look or style. If anything it was a lo-fi aesthetic using or recycling other aesthetics."

1961 Claes Oldenburg

In Claes Oldenburg's famous artist statement for the Environments, Situations, Spaces catalog (Martha Jackson Gallery, New York, 1961) he brings together an extensive list of associated forms and states that art can take in order to define vigorously his interest in the complexity of art and life. In "I am for an art that takes its form from the lines of life itself" he literally pictures a line that behaves and exists in our imagination in many diverse and familiar ways "that twists and extends impossibly & accumulates and spits and drips, and is sweet and stupid as life itself." He calls for art that one can smell or hear or smoke, that one can touch and interact with, that is a joke, that makes no sense or that eventually fulfills a function; "art you can sit on" and "art that does something other than to sit on its ass" within the context of an established art institution. Oldenburg is "for an artist who vanishes, turning up in a white cap painting signs or hallways" and "for the art of bread wet by rain."

2013 Karel Martens

In a short text that could be read as an artist statement, Karel Marten claims it would be a matter of common sense and instinct that somewhere there is the right answer. Somewhere, he pictures a "box" and he describes the way to find the box and the key to the enclosed answer inside of the box a matter of choosing and giving this box a distinct color: "Alice blue. or alizarin crimson. or amber. or amethyst. or aqua. or aquamarine. or asparagus. or azure. or beige. or bistre. or black. or blue. or bondi blue. or brass. or bright green. or bright turquoise. or bright violet. or bronze. or brown. or buff. or burgundy. or burnt orange. or burnt sienna. or burnt umber. or camouflage green. or cardinal. or carmine. or carrot. or celadon. or cerise. or cerulean. or cerulean blue. or chartreuse. or chestnut. or chocolate. or cinnamon. or cobalt. or copper. or coral. or corn. or cornflower blue. or cream. or crimson. or cyan. or dark blue. or dark brown. or dark cerulean. or dark chestnut. or dark coral, or dark goldenrod. or dark green. or dark indigo. or dark khaki. or dark olive. or dark pastel green. or dark peach. or dark pink. or dark salmon. or dark scarlet. or dark slate gray. or dark spring green. or dark tan. or dark tangerine. or dark tea green. or dark terra cotta. or dark turquoise. or dark violet. or denim. or dodger blue. or eggplant. or emerald. or fern green. or flax. or fuchsia. or gamboge. or gold. or goldenrod. or gray. or gray-asparagus. or gray-tea green. or green. or green-yellow. or heliotrope. or hot pink. or indigo. or international Klein blue. or international orange. or jade. or khaki. or khaki (X11). or lavender. or lavender blush. or lemon. or lemon cream. or light brown. or lilac. or lime. or linen. or magenta. or malachite. or maroon. or mauve. or midnight blue. or mint green. or moss green. or Mountbatten pink. or mustard. or Navajo white. or navy blue. or ochre. or old gold. or olive drab. or orange. or orchid. or pale blue. or pale brown. or pale carmine. or pale chestnut. or pale cornflower blue. or pale magenta. or pale pink. or pale red-violet. or pale sandy brown. or papaya whip. or pastel green. or pastel pink. or Paul mauve. or peach. or peach-orange. or peach-yellow. or pear. or Persian blue. or pine green. or pink. or pink-orange. or plum. or powder blue. or Prussian blue. or puce. or pumpkin. or purple. or raw umber. or red. or red-violet. or robin egg blue. or royal blue. or russet. or rust. or safety orange (blaze orange). or saffron. or salmon. or sandy brown. or sangria. or sapphire. or scarlet. or school bus yellow. or sea green. or seashell. or selective yellow. or sepia. or silver. or slate gray. or spring green. or steel blue. or swamp green. or tan. or tangerine. or taupe. or tea green. or teal. or teené. or terra cotta. or thistle. or turquoise. or ultramarine. or viridian. or wheat. or white. or wisteria. or yellow. or zinnwaldite perhaps." In the end Martens completes his personal file of color names with the eventuality to leave and keep the box as it is.

In: Karel Martens, Full Color, Roma Publications, Amsterdam, 2013, p. 143-145

Dienstag Abend Chicago

Cover the fridge with painted paper, so to make a three-dimensional painting that relates and interacts to its place, its situation by color.
This can be made from water-based paint and simple packaging paper on a roll or thicker or millboard ... for the Pepsi-lightbox on top of the fridge I suggest a piece of cardboard. If the paper already has a color (like brown paper or cardboard) it shall be primed first. The color shall be applied roughly and thick, in several layers, necessarily on both sides of the surface. By doing so its form will get slightly waved but overall it will stay quite flat. Brush strokes can be visible, dripping might occur. In general it is preferable that the painted paper maintains a handmade look and a weighty body.
After drying the painted paper shall be cut out freely with scissors or cutter and makes therefor flowing edges. Three shapes are developed according to the silhouettes of the fridge's left and right side and its light box on top. The mounting shall be done with pieces of tape rolled into loops or double-sided adhesive tape. It must be invisible.

Two color propositions

1. Advanced. Try to imitate the color of the floor or something in its immediate vicinity, literally or practically touching the fridge. By my experience a color does not have to be a precise rendition in order to look similar to a neighboring one.

2. Easy. Make a color out of the available leftovers around. In this case the mixture is made at best from more than two paint sources. There can be primer added, more paint from a neighboring boot, some grey or what is in reach.

ArtReview presents Dienstag Abend, Expo Chicago, 2014

1915 Pablo Picasso

In one of his letters Pablo Picasso aims to give his friend Guillaume Apollinaire a painter's advice. He argues that similar to the cannons, which back then were painted grey, the artillery would just as well remain visible to airplanes. Only the fact that they are jointly coated and dressed in solid colors would point out their form. Instead he suggests to daub the soldier's uniforms "with vivid colors and in bits of red, yellow, green, blue, white, like a harlequin."

In: Kenji Kajiya, The Aesthetics of Camouflage: The Art of a Military Design and its Transformation in Art, 2001