A few questions to Bernhard Wolf
Katrin Rosalind Bucher Trantow

Katrin Bucher Trantow/KBT:
In early May 2015, we inaugurated one of your works in the backside inner courtyard of the Kunsthaus Graz which promises to bring light to a dark corner. It is a commissioned work, dedicated to a specific place: The space we are dealing with is bordered on one side by the biomorphic shell of the Kunsthaus Graz, which was defined by Archigram, and on the other, by the Baroque buildings where the HdA, Haus der Architektur and some offices of the Universalmuseum Joanneum are located. In the last corner, the Iron House, which was redesigned in 2003 and is used by Camera Austria and another art institution, shuts off the courtyard. According to Marc Augé’s definition, the courtyard is a non-lieu (a non-place), a place without its own character. It is a classic in-between space, contorted and used as a passageway. When you cross it, the almost only thing you notice is the change of climate. Its features of being the shortest way and a quiet place demanded for making it visible, changing our perception, and thus upgrading it. Your work directs light into the courtyard via a mirror. Thus the title, ”If you don’t give the mind something to do, the mind will give you something to do”, probably takes this into account in a certain sense. Do I hear a certain ironic undertone here that discovers a specific witticism in the curatorial desire for usability? What is behind this play on words which, interestingly enough, shows up in a slightly alienated manner in another commissioned work – in this case a design commission for a long hallway of the Cultural Department of the State Government of Styria: “You don’t see things the way they are, you see them the way you are“?

Bernhard Wolf/BW:
What I am interested in when working with space is the fact that changes in the overall atmosphere can be applied relatively quickly with interventions. A familiar situation is pulled out of its unambiguousness, and, at best, it can then be perceived on multiple levels. It almost seems that the viewers can put together a situation themselves from released individual parts, and thus create a new view on the world for themselves. Similar techniques are often at work in spiritual systems, which reinterpret our world with apparent ease. Both project titles have been derived from speeches given by Sacinandana Swami, a spiritual teacher in the Vedic tradition of Bhakti yoga. What I like about them is their subtle witticism which takes the individual’s fixed self-conceptions ad absurdum. The artistic task was similar in both projects, that is working with spaces that have been deadlocked within themselves. In the Kunsthaus Graz, a bright courtyard which is always in the shadow; and in the Landhausgasse, a bulky hallway architecture full of cable ducts and tight proportions. What I tried to achieve in the former case was illumination by means of a graphic mark and sunlight, and in the latter, only a strong counterpoise in the form of more or less opulent designer wallpapers helped.

KBT:
Again and again, you make use of an urban and architectural-cultural information culture, you take it apart and alienate it so that in the irritation, like for example in your surprising op-art-inspired murals on the “canvases” of large municipal firewalls, visually highly powerful manifestos of the means and the power of design emerge. In this respect, I think time and again of the influential graphic developments which marked the departure of the people into different directions in the beginning of the twentieth century. For example, of figures like the great inventor of pictograms, Otto Neurath, or, of course, the constructivist Russian inventors of images, like El Lissitzky or Malevich. Is there a connection to these pioneers, and if yes, what is your connection to the socio-political ideas of these figures?

BW:
I have always been fascinated by communication by means of simple elements such as logos or slogans. You inevitably end up with Otto Neurath or the Russian Constructivists, like Rodchenko/Stepanova. All the better if these then new visual languages also served a socio-political purpose, quick ascertainability of economic power relationships, and thus awareness-raising. Today, the crisis of increasing unequal distribution of wealth is similar again, yet the media landscape in its omnipresence has a different quality. I think present-day public communication via advertising, announcements etc is basically manipulation which is supposed to drive us into diverse states of unrest. In such a context, the question arises which signals I want to feed in the public space as an artist. I am above all interested in creating an open space. I try to achieve this with irritations – graphic ones or by means of specific materials. So that our automated vision decelerates for a little while and switches into the mode of loose associations. I select the motives for associating in several operational steps and exercise in reduction and lightness, whereby I don’t back off from nonsense too. For the most part, I rule out signals with a negative spin even though some ideas may have a strong effect in the studio. In this respect, the years at the Free Academy Moscow with Aleksandr Petlyura in the 1990s were formative for me. In the fairly wild artistic practice of the time, maximum expression was often achieved via reduction while for the most part preserving a playful touch. The interplay of images and language, and the minimalist gesture, can also be found in the Moscow Conceptualism of the 1970s and 1980s. For example, one of my favourites is the work “Palec/Finger“ by Andrej Monastirskij, where the viewing person is encouraged to stick his or her own finger through a cardboard box at eye level, and view it as an art object. Things can’t be easier and more appropriate than that. Jenny Holzer’s language pieces in the public have influenced me, although I encountered a limit there as some of Holzer’s works slide into negative formulations, at least for me. This is a line I only want to cross if the intended purpose requires it. There, a meaning is generated that rather copies the obtrusive tendency of the public signs instead of breaking them.

KBT:
Yes, it is characteristic for your works that they are not loud. However much they tend to push themselves to the fore visually, their content is rather subtle, or even silent. I am thinking of the large-formal mural KRAFTWERK, for example, (which also exists in the form of small graphic variations on paper, from the project series In Alle Netze, which you realised in cooperation with Art in Public Spaces Styria in Graz in 2013. There, the opportunity to discover them in an almost intimate way was a crucial factor of the works’ persuasive power. Such discovering is also occurring in the continuation of the work in Kunsthaus Graz now – when you seem to push the colour surface that is to catch and reflect the sunlight in a narrow courtyard through the wall into the stairway as a vertical colour circle – in a linking block of the dental clinic of the Graz State Hospital. And only the really attentive viewers are able to discover it between the handrail and the window surface. Yet those who are successful will have their joy of discovery precisely due to its subtlety. One element of the silent quality of your works probably is that you find open surfaces but do not elaborate them further, you leave them raw, and you only work on them with the materials and colours that are common there. The same goes for your work in the courtyard of the Kunsthaus Graz, where you catch the sunlight with a mirror on the roof that reminds of a satellite dish, and redirect it to a circle painted on the floor. Hence the materials you use also always refer to the site. Thereby, you act like a craftsman. You strive for a certain kind of perfection and you are not always purely modernist but you adapt to the conditions of the material. What is your relationship to craftsmanship in this respect?

BW:
For me, craftsmanship is first and foremost a means to an end. And if the end requires this, it may sometimes also go in the direction of perfection. What seems most important to me is capturing the character of a place, its essence from proportions, social codes, usability, history etc. As you have noticed, I try to apply a certain degree of reserve in my works, no matter how eye-catching they might appear. This goes both for the installations in the Kunsthaus Graz and in the Graz State
Hospital, and for the selection of the walls for the painting in the outdoor space. I neither want to superimpose too much on the existing site nor completely alienate it. I achieve my strongest artistic expression in keeping the right balance. Thus also the materials appropriate for the site. Some works are only temporary guests in the first place and disappear by themselves; for example, if the site changes, and I like this idea. That artistic statements need not necessarily become subject to restoration but can also, just like us, go the way
of all flesh.

KBT:
Referring to Bruno Latour’s quasi-objects, Judith Laister calls your works quasi-icons and thus makes clear that it is important for you to facilitate the in-between of definitions and open attribution ‘into all networks”. Does this mean that your works are elusive? Hence refuse any attributions?

BW:
Exactly. It is one aim of my work not to create clear readability at first sight. But not because I want to hijack my dear audience into an encoded concept where one can work one’s way through to the artist’s real message if one is interested enough; no, it’s because there are also many different interpretations for myself. It is my main intention to make room for imagination. To win back interpretational sovereignty over a public space overcharged with other signs. This is similar to the approach of innovative street art, which creates completely different images in otherwise familiar places through its adaptations. This is also the way I create my works. I shift combinations of words and images until the content becomes ambiguous. I discard many sketches because they seem to me too simple, too weird, or simply too banal. Only when I’m floundering myself with my own assessment when viewing a work of mine, I hang on to it. The subjects only fully unfold in connection with the actual site, hence it remains open until the end if the desired effect sets in or not.

KBT:
One last question: You just mentioned social unrest, or even deliberately created unrest, if I got that right. Especially today, our society is characterised by unrest that is sneaking into all circumstances in life, and which has completely different reasons, ranging from information overload and the feelings of guilt of the rich West right down to the spiritual loss of faith, and manifests in a certain uncertainty of the definitions of identity. Is this unrest that you (also) mean when you speak of the manipulative qualities of the capitalist production of images (and models) in advertising?

BW:
I think that the anxiety created in your felicitous examples is the result of unrest that has been stirred for commercial reasons. Probably, the initial spark for manipulation is the message “You are not enough”. And I often encounter it in the public space. Yet I fully endorse every authentic signal that emerges in the urban space with good intentions.

Katrin Rosalind Bucher Trantow, Chief Curator,
Kunsthaus Graz, Universalmuseum Joanneum, Austria