Cornelia Gockel, “Kommunikation ist keine Kunst,” Süddeutsche Zeitung, November 2, 1995
Communication Is Not Art
Helmut Draxler’s Last Exhibition at Kunstverein München
Hardly a decade has passed and it has already become the subject of historical contemplation: the muchmaligned, or instead glorified nineteen-eighties are now on the threshold of history, and the Kunstverein München is dedicating an exhibition project to them. After a four-year tenure, it is the last exhibition of the hotly debated Kunstverein director Helmut Draxler. As successor to Zdenek Felix, who had used the classicist rooms of the Kunstverein München for glamorous stagings, he was not quite able to assert himself with his conceptual approach. Many Kunstverein members found his concepts too theoretical and too brittle in terms of their aesthetic design.
Once again, those visitors will be disappointed who expect an eighties-themed lifestyle exhibition or
an opulent picture show. Instead, the scenario of wall newspapers, photographs, and photocopied sheets that is more reminiscent of an information booth of a student council than an art exhibition. However, once you overcome the first hurdle and if you have not been put off by the emphatically unpretentious working atmosphere, you may discover some interesting projects in the exhibition. Helmut Draxler has gone against the grain of the eighties and presents, instead of cosmopolitan yuppie chic, different aspects of neighborhood culture in collaboration with groups from London, Berlin, and Munich. “Act local, think global” is the motto here.
The presentation is symptomatic of many of the exhibitions organized by Helmut Draxler during his time as the director of Kunstverein München. Instead of mediating art, the viewer is left to his own devices. Draxler’s exhibition refrains from prescribing a fixed concept or a pattern of thought and instead presents the existing material in its broad diversity.
The viewer is called upon to form his or her own picture of the world and to continue thinking about the project together with the artists. To mark the occasion, a varied program of discussions, video and film screenings, concerts, and lectures was offered outside of normal opening hours to complement and expand the exhibitions. Art is thus not only made communicable, but communication itself is elevated to art.
This all sounds quite exciting at first, but, in fact, is not.
For fear of forcing the viewer into pre-fabricated thought pattern, any individual artistic position is largely renounced. In the process, something quite essential is lost, something that privileges art as a medium compared to theoretical discourse: its aesthetic appearance. Left alone in a flood of information of equal importance, visitors wander between wall newspapers and video devices, between bookshelves and CD players. The entry into the world of art and communication — it doesn’t quite seem to succeed. (The exhibition 15 Jahre 1980. Subkulturen und urbane Auseinandersetzungen is on view until November 12).