Announcements

Announcements, 2010
Room installation: wood, 100 ink-jet prints, metal, bleach, 1200 x 1200 x 240 cm

A structure consisting of twelve wooden boards on stilts zigzagging throughout the whole exhibition space, forming a “U”. The visitor can walk all around this “U”. About 100 prints are (permanently) pasted up on both sides of the boards. These prints are 1:1 reproductions of a series of about 50 drawings especially made for this installation, which means that most of them appear multiplied two ore more times.

shown in:
“Totally German!”, Kim Kim Gallery @ Good Hands! @ Ggooll Pool, Seoul, South Korea (2012)
“This is Perfect”, Art Public, Collins Park, South Beach, Miami, USA (solo show, 2011)
art:gwangju:11, with Kim Kim Gallery, Gwangju, South Korea (2011)
“Announcements Annonces Ankündigungen”, ( les halles ) espace d’art contemporain, Porrentruy, Switzerland (solo show, 2010)


 

The setting reminds the announcement boards in the entry area of city halls, with the posters of the political candidates of a forthcoming election, announcements of events and so on. But if one tries to develop this analogy in greater detail, one gets stuck. And whoever begins this to read as an exhibition of drawings (objects of art being displayed on a movable display not being part of the work of art) will get stuck very soon, too. In fact, the multiplied copies and the missing of any “original”, and the “improper” way of “hanging”, the missing of any first- and (especially) second-degree storyline or “artistic will of expression”, demands some refocusing by the visitor based on his self-awareness, wants he further penetrate the work.
“Announcements” as a whole is a display-machine, a medium as the message if you will, not as some self-sufficient statement, but as just one amongst many other (sociological, linguistic …) findings and interests within this work (the operating of the installation as a whole and in its parts, and also of the individual drawings). Announcements are already before they become occupied by official language. With regard to the city hall analogy, I realized that (even abstract) mimesis of official language was not enough. I felt the necessity for using “minor”, “unofficial” language.

Robert Estermann, 2010


 

Bibliography:
Kunst-Bulletin, Annelise Zwez, “Robert Estermann”, 7-8/2010, Zurich, p. 56

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