Gallery Hanf-Weihnacht (Frankfurt/Main)
»Slow Burn«
Solo exhibition
April 2012
Kunstmuseum Stuttgart
»Rasterfahndung«
Group show
May 2012
Letter from BERLIN
The Brooklyn Rail, March 2011 (by David Rhodes)
Alois Riegl (1858 – 1905), an Austrian art historian, was a major figure in establishing the study of art history as an independent discipline. He was also highly influential in the development of late 19th century formalism. It is well documented that Greenbergian formalism, with its blinkered appreciation of mid-20th century painting and sculpture, has brought this way of looking into serious disrepute. While notions of formalism have been debated as far back as Plato and his argument for eidos (shape) being as much a product of our ideas as our perception, it seems clear that form is in a non- passive relationship with any beholder.
Riegl’s reputation as an innovative and radical art historian was firmly established with the publication of his second book, Stilfragen: Grundlegungen zu einer Geschichte der Ornamentik (Problems of Style: Foundations for a History of Ornament, 1893). In this extraordinary text, Riegl described a continuous “history of ornament” that followed particular motifs from the Ancient Near East through Classical, early Medieval, and Islamic decorative art. In doing this he proposed the idea of Kunstwollen, which translates very approximately as “the desire for art,” or perhaps more accurately as the desire for what we have come to name as art. Riegl believed that the stylistic directions of any given age were driven not by mimetic or technological expediencies but by a visual and formal dialectic. This would apply equally to belt buckles, textiles, or paintings. Claiming a history for ornamentation was unexpected and resisted, since it was thought that only serious painting or sculpture was worthy of an analytical history.
Riegl moved from one innovation to another in his art historical thinking. Combining his concept of Kunstwollen with a growing interest in the so-called transitional periods of art production, he considered these eras of equal interest to classical periods, making this the central issue of his third book, Spätrömische Kunst-Industrie (Late Roman Art Industry, 1901). One of the clearest expressions of his concept of Kunstwollen comes in the final passage of this book: “The plastic Kunstwollen regulates man’s relationship to the sensibly perceptible appearance of things. Art expresses the way man wants to see things shaped and colored, just as the poetic Kunstwollen expresses how men want to imagine them. Man is not only the passive, sensory recipient, but also a desiring, active being who wishes to interpret the world in such a way (varying from one people, region, or epoch to another)...in religion, philosophy, science, even statecraft and law.”
Shortly before his death from cancer at the age of 47, Riegl had been working on another concept: that of “attentiveness,” exploring the relationship between viewer and work of art. All these ideas are revisited, of course, in contemporary aesthetics: the preoccupation with context; reassessing what has been categorized as minor art; and the relationship between viewer and object.
For DAG, an artist who is equally at ease with the motifs of Modernism and the products of design stores, corner shops, and DIY centers, Riegl’s ideas of “attentiveness” find renewed relevance. Included in the Laura Mars Grp. exhibition are geometrical paintings using store-bought, triangular templates. At first glance, the small-scale triangle, carefully filled-in and repeated with fine felt-tip pens across a square meter or more of canvas (or, in past cases, an old T-shirt) evoke both the patterning typical of mass-produced fabrics and the weavings of Anni Albers. The idea of shape being determined intuitively while remaining formally rigorous and inclusive of materials outside of the art supply store makes for visually rich and surprising work. As with Albers, the craft of making, in her case weaving, combined with the work’s appearance, synthesizes modernist abstraction and the continuing history of ornament: For Albers, it was the visual texts of Peruvian and Mexican textiles; for DAG, somewhat closer to home, it is the patterns and designs of industrial production.
Across a doorway, party streamers form a curtain of bright angular patterning that separates as it reaches the floor, the streamers curling randomly, invoking the social spaces where DAG made a reputation for himself in the 1990s as a DJ in Berlin’s numerous unregulated clubs. The sight of the doorway is like hearing a folk melody from Stravinsky, but here it’s in a dance hall and not concert hall. Strangely, after the beginning of a new century, and significantly after 9/11, the Berlin club and art scenes moved abruptly toward a more regulated and professionalized context. The old open, improvised way of life seemed threatening and not so easily controlled. A more conservative attitude developed in reaction to events.
Throughout DAG’s work, the feeling is of found beauty, discovered composition, and finely tuned repetition. A pale blue sheet of cloth, its weave open in parts, is stretched like canvas on a frame, resembling a Blinky Palermo with imperfections but totally removed in impact from that currently celebrated artist’s work. The worn threads make tiny geometric shapes that evoke the tiny triangles repeated across DAG’s paintings as well as the crossing, diagonal bands on the party streamers. The range of perceived time is extreme, from the quickly stretched pale blue sheet to the pen-drawn paintings and their many hours of labour. The works are long in the looking, with details revealing themselves slowly—things found, things manipulated, and things worked over for extended periods. The making is not fetishized, nor is it to be looked at through an idealistic lens about labor or high and low art. The connectedness between ornament and shape, craft, and fine art is complete. Where would Riegl place these works? He would recognize that after Modernism, we are in a transitional period of assessment that takes into consideration recent as well as distant achievements. And I think he would appreciate the attitude and means evident here in DAG’s Berlin exhibition.
Welt ohne Gegenstände
Tagesspiegel, 30.10.2004
Asim Chugthai unterhält neben der Galerie Fleisch auch den Projektraum glue, und hat in direkter Konfrontation zur narrativen Malerei seine Schau „Welt ohne Gegenstände“ mit elf Künstlern, Katalog und kurzer Laufzeit produziert. Der Raum liegt im 4. Hinterhof (Prenzlauer Allee 34; bis 3.November), aber die Teilnehmer stehen qualitativ in der vordersten Reihe: Jens Wolf, Stefan Wieland, Gerwald Rockenschaub, Gerold Miller, Joachim Grommek, DAG.
Man kennt diese Künstler aus dem Hamburger Bahnhof oder von Daimler Chrysler Contemporary und ist verblüfft, dass sie in der notdürftig renovierten Halle fast durchweg Meisterwerke abgeliefert haben. Als der Kurator am Eröffnungsabend nach Preisen gefragt wurde, hatte er sich darüber mit den Künstlern noch nicht verständigt. Aber dann: Eine makellose Paraphrase auf Malewitsch von Rockenschaub kostet nur 4300 Euro, die verlässliche Perfektion des noch immer unterschätzten Joachim Grommek 2000 Euro.
Peter Herbstreuth
Verwirrung in den Wolken
TAZ, 27.10.2004
Dass eine „Welt ohne Gegenstände“ nicht eindeutig abstrakter Natur sein muss, ist in der gleichnamigen Gruppenausstellung zu sehen. Etwa wenn der Berliner Künstler DAG aus kleinsten schwarzen Pünktchen riesige Wolkengebilde entstehen lässt. Wie auch bei konventionell verstandener abstrakter Malerei versucht das Auge etwas zu formen, das fassbar erscheint. Aber sind Wolken tatsächlich gegenstandslos? Das Atom an sich, aus dem sich Wolken zusammensetzen, ist – bedient man sich der richtigen Mittel – unbestritten ein winziges Ding. Wo also ist die Grenze zwischen gegenstandsloser und abstrakter Darstellung?
MJ
Driften
Dag in der Moschee
Frankfurter Rundschau, 30.05.2001
Linien und Flächen, Verdichtung und Lichtung, Offenheit und Rahmung, Farbe und Schwarzweiß. Die Bilder des Berliner Künstlers DAG leben vom formalen Kontrast. Schablonierte Formen werden durch krakelige Knäuel konterkariert, aber auch pointiert, geraten aus dem Gleichgewicht oder bilden ein neues. Zuweilen klammern kurze Querstriche lange saitenartige Linien: Als gelte es, etwas zusammen zu halten, was doch wieder auseinander driftet.
Kandinsky scheint der eine Pol dieser Arbeiten, Jackson Pollock der andere. Von ihm mag auch die Verweigerung einer eigenen Handschrift kommen: Die Flächen und Punktelemente sind oft mit Schablonen gearbeitet. Oder gar aufgeklebte Fertigteile. Auch die Linien von Hand mehr an zufallsbetonte Dripping-Techniken angelehnt als an eine konzentrierte, kalkulierte Linienführung. Acrylflächen stehen gegen Filzstiftlinien, gegen Tipp Ex, Edding und Bleistift.
Dieses widersprüchliche Spektrum wird sehr deutlich in den Arbeiten der Videokünstler Vanish RGB, Visomat, Safi Sniper, Rechenzentrum, die ebenfalls Bestandteil der Ausstellung sind: Sie unterstreichen den Materialcharakter gegenwärtiger Kunst indem sie aus einem Pool von Bildern DAGs herausgreifen, was sie interessiert, indem sie Akzente setzen und zugleich Lesarten vorschlagen.
Die Arbeiten, die Asim Chugtai für für den Ausstellungsraum moschee™® in Offenbach zusammengestellt hat, verweisen auf DAGs künstlerische Herkunft: Clubs, Graffiti und Comics sind der Hintergrund seiner Bilder. Oft inspiriert von Musik. DAG samplet und loopt, erstellt Cover-Versionen, scratcht und überblendet. Rhythmen werden aufgebaut und unterbrochen. Die Ordnung, die diese Arbeiten aufbauen wollen, zerstört sich immer wieder selbst oder muss zerstört werden. Chaos als Prinzip.
Florian Malzbacher
Jenes intuitive, zweckfreie Tun
Körperertüchtigung, Galerie Fiebach & Minninger, Köln, 7.1. - 4.3.2000
Kunstforum International, Bd. 150, April-Juni 2000
[…]Hier wird unter dem Titel „Körperertüchtigung“ eine von Michael Kaue kuratierte Team-Arbeit des dreifachen Skateboardweltmeisters Mark Gonzales mit den Künstlern Johannes Wohnseifer und DAG präsentiert.
[…]Die Malerei des dritten Teammitglieds DAG, teilt unter dem Titel „Temporary Fine Art“ nur einen Aspekt mit Sport und zwar die – wie er es nennt – „Umschlagsgeschwindigkeit“. DAG malt täglich an mehreren Bildern gleichzeitig und recycelt Formen aus Werbung und Design: Heraus kommen zwar Festschreibungen auf Leinwand, die jedoch – wie der Titel formuliert – der Kurzlebigkeit des Kunstmarktes Rechnung tragen und auf jeden inhaltlichen Bezug verzichten.
Während Gonzales den Skateboard-Sport, der sich mittlwerweile vom subkulturellen Jugendsport zum gewinnträchtigen Medienereignis entwickelt hat, in seinen poetischen Performances zur Kunst erhebt, raubt DAG der Kunst durch Aneignung der sportspezifischen Schnelligkeit in seinen Bildern gerade diese Erhabenheit.
Michael Kaue nennt die Gemeinsamkeit „Körperertüchtigung“, „Kant nennt sie Spieltrieb“.
Barbara Foerster
DAG @ Can Gallery
New Art Examiner
Just as this young and promising exhibition space on the Northwest side of Chicago was starting to get set up and running smoothly they've had to close shop and go on hiatus until a new location can be secured. In an exhibition titled „Doping“, DAG, a Berlin-based painter and disk jockey, mounted a collection of sleek, modest-sized paintings, modest-length videos, and one graphic installation for the closing show at the gallery's Wicker Park location.
DAG's paintings were almost never installed at eye-level. Sometimes alone, but often grouped just above or way below a viewer's horizon or hovering in a corner, the square paintings present playful collections of dots, bars, strokes, ellipses, lozenges, fields of color, and stripes. Layers of these elements are composed in arrangements best described as having tempo, rhythm, timbre, and cadence; the work is invested in a visual language that is articulated like music is played.
There is no conceptual claim here; rather, this is process-based work that does not seek to teach, challenge, or offend. The themes of the show were formal – a bright palette, sleek design elements, and insistent overlapping. Like a DJ selects and mixes samples of music, DAG gathers together what he considers the best bits of popular visual culture and design, and layers them. He does not muse over the meaning of every stroke but instead finds his aesthetic groove and rides it, canvas after canvas.
Each composition is as hip and tasteful as the next, no one painting was the star of the show, not even the large wall installation of a constellation of orange and red circle-shaped stickers. Some of the images even seemed a bit dull when imagined apart from the rhythmic context of the whole collection. Deep contemplation of any single canvas was unrewarding, as DAG refused any sensuality in his use of material, which tends to be flat in both dimension and luster. Texture is expressed only through an occasional dense cluster of pen scribbles. Still there is a charming Modernist savvy to the work.
In a cubicle, a television screen showed a compilation of video pieces that DAG made with several different German video artists. A rapid, percussive audio beat drew me closer to the monitor where I saw DAG's paintings in action. His distinctive colors and shapes flashed on the screen, element by element, synched with the quick tempo of borrowed techno tracks. Animated circles, grids, bands, arcs, and solids snake, jump, spread, and interlace across the screen in a pulse so insistent I was glad I am not prone to seizures.
I imagine DAG creating his visual language the same way an accomplished jazz musician plays solos – isolating a phrase and then intuitively riffing on it. I left the show with little memory of any particular image, but with a sense of an artist confident in his understanding of playful composition.
Leah Finch