Report, conditionally.

Even at standstill remains being busy: the swimmer (Eastern Wisdom)

What we show in the form of an exhibition is: a report. But it is art as well. I stay with the circulating conventions of the production of art and at the same time I wish their results to be perceived as documents. I have a quick look and trust Wikipedia: Report is defined as a document that objectively describes a situation or an action without the inclusion of any judgement of the author. At the expense of the discrepancy, arising through the wish to report in the form of art, thrives every documentary practise. In case it succeeds. On or about what are we reporting?

Let us list the occasions, events and facts, which have led us to the works, elsewhere.* Because the discrepancy itself seems to be more important for the moment; it arose from the claim: to make a kind of art that could be made without the interference and the evaluation of an authorized person (artist). How could this be possible? It works! Conditionally. At this point just the assertion: art is a little more than just the establishing and moderation of events of encounters of circumstances, the encounters of actions; and finally as a consequence of the utterance: the encounters of protagonists.

A weak definition, I admit, but strongly interlaced after all. Weak word as well: encounter, as always and ever there are strong antagonisms of which we would need to report­ – in the best case those are preserved in the documents. This works as well: conditionally. Maybe we have to admit without any evaluation that art is since ever: a weak form of world. Maybe we like it for this. The art. The world through the art. Is this enough? Discrepancy, I take a look again, from Latin dis-crepare, „crack apart“, „creak different“. Still: that which obstructed the view leaves me breathless. Whereupon indeed: this kind of satisfaction is a betrayal as well. What remains is creaking. And no better human being.

Excerpt Review:

(…) Here suddenly emerges with unusual clarity a general reflection of different forms of work and production processes, which can also be found in the older photo series assembly line (2010). There, the formal clashes with the content: on the one hand, the individual photographs, hung in a row, combine to form a picture of the eponymous production line; on the other hand, contrary to their salient characteristic of reproducibility, the photographs are unique. The illusion of artistic sovereignty, the inadequacy of the (artist) subject and the contingency of artistic production are finally condensed in the two formally related sculptures Der Absatz and Der Schwimmer (both 2013). (…)

(…) In their self­deprecating and referential form ­ a wooden cube structure reminiscent of Sol LeWitt, combined with futuristic fanned wooden strips and a kind of Beuys’ shaman rod made of metal ­they testify to the large, ultimately crossed by the lowlands of everyday life project, a universal, perfect sculpture create. To The Swimmer Stroj writes in the self­written press release: “The swimmer is the rest of an interruption of the attempt to summarize all (!) previously developed sculptural languages: urgently was the toilet flushing the repair shop Berger to repair.” (…)
(Maximilian Geymüller in Frieze d / e NO.13 March­/April 2014)

We like art! The process of producing works of art is actually an astonishing act of balancing between the louder and quieter voices involved – rumorous decision making,­ and after a really willfull abstinence and minimization, I can report: what can not be totally avoided, is such a position of an insistance that one might have a last word. Only conditionally. So just conditionally: a report. Therefore, we call for once an exhibition solely Misha Stroj and not The Setting Of The Romantic Sun and not Hippopotamus, The Cloud and not Diction, Not Disorder and not The Miracle Of Galata and not Got Lost In The Game. Oops, I Did It Again ­ that’s what we could still call it. Misha Stroj, Vienna, 16/01/2014