DREI
Arndtstraße 4, D-50676 Köln
+49 221 46753979, info@raum-drei.de
Christian Freudenberger
Log
Nov 21 – Dec 15, 2014
Distressed to death, and it doesn’t even notice. Creature! It’s not even ashamed of itself!
I am still sick.
I no longer limp on the left side, but on the right.
I no longer limp on the left side, but on the right.
Abandon all this form!
Use all that has been prefigured, turn and twist it around to meet your requirements!
Use all that has been prefigured, turn and twist it around to meet your requirements!
Anyone who sees the world with his or her own eyes experiences a totality of self
Anyone who has seen the world with his or her own eyes has personal knowledge of it all.
The mystery of aesthetic consciousness, bog of imagery pit. The pictures are returning
A sketch, an immediate sediment of human thought.
Idea and imagination in the space of the self—hence without knowing anything about it
Idea and imagination in the space of the self—hence without knowing anything about it
That is feeling
why should we always defend something that carries itself in any case.
why should we always defend something that carries itself in any case.
People leave tracks behind them, footprints without wanting to. Structures arise for us, which we then call images
People have images in their minds; they create images by acting out their plans. This used to be civilization’s guarantee, an anchor in life, but today it is the source if its own destruction, the source of the tremendous piles of garbage in the world and in the information realm.
The whole thing is perverted, inverted into an insane phenomenon of disappearance. The brilliant capabilities and technologies by which people continuously create
themselves are now carelessly bringing about a decline into absurdity and abnormality.
And the universe is dark; light is a ray of human arrogance. Nothing of all that we see truly exists that way.
Nothing of all that is represented is truly that way, exactly. Realism is an absurd dream we cannot live without.
How can life be released from its own perfidious brand of idiocy, that of continuing to exist? Without a trace of survival, a first.
How can I free myself from hope’s stupid determination? When I can’t give it up because of enthusiasm and excitement.
There is always an essence that we capture, usually in images, melodies, or poems, that we recognize, create.
Images are spiritual and quite possibly spirited, just as they are tasteful and interwoven with the belief invested in them.
The spirited nature of an image does not justify the unknown, meaningless essence in the world, about the world; rather, it denounces it as a part of unnecessary speculation for the purpose of eternal activity, of survival. The only value anything has is in terms of the market. Thus, the world of images has moved from intellectual home to the Gomorrah of clich.s and all kinds of kitschy temptations/commercial prospects—the more spirited it is, the more garbage it produces.
That is why it amazes me that images are still, or for that very reason, considered worthy of art. The price for devaluing them through their interchangeability and the anecdotal nature of their connections has long been paid. But they endure, and they reemerge again and again like a song whose singer is different or somewhere else, whose essence has yet to be recognized.
Artists become production specialists, recyclers, removers of visual garbage.
If you take a look at the number of artists that dedicate themselves to making or using images as though it were self-evident, then the image doesn’t seem at all obsolete, decayed, or implausible; in its endless resilience it comes to resemble its counterpart, spoken language. A protrusion of reason, a human organ—naturally.
All this harmfulness might very well exist, but it’s open to interpretation dependent
on the point of departure.
In terms of their materiality, images might be a fact. But this goes just as unrecognized as their lack of content, which is also a fact. We always have to see something in them, without knowing why and without recognizing a meaning that can be generalized.
The objective universality of today’s images is simply the confusion of events they derive from. But the truth of the image is always without location.
on the point of departure.
In terms of their materiality, images might be a fact. But this goes just as unrecognized as their lack of content, which is also a fact. We always have to see something in them, without knowing why and without recognizing a meaning that can be generalized.
The objective universality of today’s images is simply the confusion of events they derive from. But the truth of the image is always without location.
Like words, images aren’t even there, outside the transcendence of consciousness. The image is like the word: it comes from within!
What should we do with these shells, these almost meaningless trifles?
Once again dependent on such human confusion, it’s a question of the power of the fashionable; fashion allows everything, it just has to be considered fashion.
This is why realism is allowed to exist as a western paradigm and can serve well as an unusual form of an idea of order, a person’s or a society’s idea for living.
This is why realism is allowed to exist as a western paradigm and can serve well as an unusual form of an idea of order, a person’s or a society’s idea for living.
The further one goes out into the world, the more ubiquitously all available space was filled, pictures increased with conquests; the more everything loses its meaning, its resistance: it flows out into space, as though it should have remained in a
smaller context.
The consumption of images. Demotivation.
It becomes the endpoint of EMPTINESS, madly reproduced images that are
smaller context.
The consumption of images. Demotivation.
It becomes the endpoint of EMPTINESS, madly reproduced images that are
everywhere, entirely without context, like the plastic bags on the streets of the megacities in emerging countries.
But I can’t think of how it is to be so EMPTY in real life. I always have an image and I need one, too, some sort of reason to arrive at something. It doesn’t matter what, you only need a work of minimum quality, regardless of whether or not it’s entertaining. So, to allow this and to give oneself over to true dullness—completely tired, depleted, vacuous or spirited, let happen what may—I really had no idea! It can scream all it wants to, it’s nothing!
And so I keep at it even more; the main thing is that it results in something with a spark, I try for as long as it takes until it works out.
But isn’t this insanity pointless? Isn’t it an error within its own system—as is the world economy, the plundering of natural resources—isn’t that combustion?
The Earth opens up, and out of, the old and ancient troubles of survived existence.
People are seduced by their own reason, their own tools. Everything has to be directed towards the goal, toward meaning and profit, others will just have to go hungry—in the worst case, die a miserable cancer death.
Their half-creatures lose touch, pull them to the sky and away from this reality, which the machines are taking over, the mute consequences of our activities, old gods of a world drained of souls.
Their half-creatures lose touch, pull them to the sky and away from this reality, which the machines are taking over, the mute consequences of our activities, old gods of a world drained of souls.
Psychophysics of self-motivation
Not finding meaning, but getting rid of it, like hazardous waste. The noxious gas
of meaning makes our lives increasingly difficult, the kitsch of normative thought destroys the dimension of our dreams, the self is overrun with the glutamate of merchandizing. The self is overtaken by the unbearably stupid smell of sold fragrance, it will only be present on the level of basic law, an actor without reality.
of meaning makes our lives increasingly difficult, the kitsch of normative thought destroys the dimension of our dreams, the self is overrun with the glutamate of merchandizing. The self is overtaken by the unbearably stupid smell of sold fragrance, it will only be present on the level of basic law, an actor without reality.
The self, the I is lost, its you goes unrecognized.
Now, we can babble like babies, we can latch ourselves like viruses onto the metabolism (of the spectacle)—nonparticipating beings of prehistoric times, their atavism is the spirit.
The peaceful confusion of images, their lack of classification is right and good. Also because it’s genuine. But one must now bear saying goodbye to truth and law as theoretical entities of madness, just as one said one’s goodbyes to almost everything after one realized that it was crazy.
All that remains is the individual work.
In order to create commonalities for groups with similar interests, one insures that all have similar preconditions. But when all the categories disappear, a possible architecture of the image also loses its footing and gets lost in vagueness. What remains is a strange mass of forms and colors whose grammar evokes nonsense.
The more I do, the more the cycle accelerates, the whirlpool. Aesthetic is everything, that only means incident, to feel like ...
anyone who doesn’t trust the various shades of a formulation’s meaning becomes lost in nothingness, like a decal, a sticker.
In order to create commonalities for groups with similar interests, one insures that all have similar preconditions. But when all the categories disappear, a possible architecture of the image also loses its footing and gets lost in vagueness. What remains is a strange mass of forms and colors whose grammar evokes nonsense.
The more I do, the more the cycle accelerates, the whirlpool. Aesthetic is everything, that only means incident, to feel like ...
anyone who doesn’t trust the various shades of a formulation’s meaning becomes lost in nothingness, like a decal, a sticker.
The image-generating artist of today, he or she finds images rather than searches
for them or even invents them. Basically, the artist doesn’t do anything and should therefore hardly feel guilty of mental pollution. But how does the image appear now? In what form and consensus, in what situation does an image occur?
for them or even invents them. Basically, the artist doesn’t do anything and should therefore hardly feel guilty of mental pollution. But how does the image appear now? In what form and consensus, in what situation does an image occur?
What does the painter do?
Does the painter still search for art? It’s not the formal thrashing out, the understanding of the field, the mastery of the discipline; rather, it’s impudent to become active with all this intellectual confusion.
Yet, what should one do, lie down in bed and starve!?
Yet, what should one do, lie down in bed and starve!?
Meanwhile: the individual disappears, so why the shame? And so, more of this making, this nonsense, and more garbage
Carpets of plastic bits as large as Europe cover the oceans
Poetry: Perfection clarity precision no longer heals any wounds
But anyone who says all of this doesn’t exist is not from this world.
We don’t come from nowhere.
Being human means resisting lethargy.
Being human means resisting lethargy.
“Wake up, you sleeper!”
(Text by Alex Jasch)
(Text by Alex Jasch)
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Log is Christian Freudenberger’s (b.1971, DE) first solo exhibition with the gallery after Neue Höhle Real (2011) at the former projectspace at Albertusstrasse 3.
The central part of the exhibition ist the correspondent series of paintings on paper.
The artist’s works had been on view in solo- and group exhibitions a.o. at Autocenter, Berlin, The Northern Charter, Newcastle, UK (both 2013), Kunstverein Krefeld, DE, Van Horbourg, Basel (both 2012), Eastside Projects Birmingham, UK, Museum Abtei Liesborn, DE (both 2011), Schmela Haus, Düsseldorf, Galerie Van Horn, Düsseldorf, Kunstverein Schwerte (all 2010), Kunstmuseum Bonn, DE (2006), Chinati Foundation, Marfa, Texas, US, Saarland Museum, Saarbrücken, DE (all 2004) Kunsthalle Recklinghausen, DE, Jablonka Galerie, Cologne (both 2003), Konrad Fischer Galerie, Düsseldorf (2000).
Between 2008 and 2011 Freudenberger and the artist Markus Karstieß ran the Kunstverein Schwerte (Schwerte, DE), for which they developed a.o. the collaborative exhibition series Corridor Plateau, whose fifth edition they curated for Autocenter Berlin in 2013.
Christian Freudenberger lives and works in Düsseldorf.
Christian Freudenberger, Alex Jasch, DREI, Cologne
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