"It can bring joy to follow others and in this way become a part of their
group," Yanagi explains in an interview in perfect Warholesque manner.
"For me, it was a pleasant feeling to become part of a group. I wanted
others to see this, too … appearance is important. It shows something…"
Life is conveyed on the surface, yet Yanagi's photographs, despite their
perfection and brilliance, are in a certain sense "images of the everyday"
in which the distinction between private and public life ceases to exist.
The American painter
Elisabeth Peyton, born in 1965, also finds the models for her paintings in
"public," widely disseminated images borrowed from books, magazines,
record covers, or stills of music videos, as well as from her own
collection of "private" photographs. Sid Vicious, Oscar Wilde, Jarvis
Cocker, David Hockney, and Leonardo di Caprio: historical figures and
living persons appear as fragile beings with light-colored eyes and
scarlet lips, more androgynous than belonging to any particular sex.
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Elisabeth Peyton, Little Em
(Eminiem), 2002
©Elisabeth Peyton
Courtesy of Sadie Coles
HQ, London
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Elisabeth Peyton, Kirsty Navigating,
2001
©Sadie Coles Gallery, London; Deutsche Bank Collection
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"I think about how certain people have influenced the lives
of others," the artist stated in an interview with Francesco Bonami in
1996. "It doesn't matter who they are, or how famous, but rather how
beautiful the path they've taken in their life has been and how inspiring
they've been for others. And I find this with people I often see just as
much as with people I've never met." Peyton's work in the building at
Roßmarkt, the drawing Kristy Navigating (2001), appears just
as fragile as her paintings. When we look at the young woman sitting in
the passenger seat of a car and immersed in a road map, it suddenly seems
as though art has the same function as the open map spread out on the
woman's lap.
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Frank Bauer, Abwasch, 1997
©Galerie
Voss, Düsseldorf; Deutsche Bank Collection
The recorded moment not only serves memory, but also a navigation through a
flood of divergent impressions, relationships, private experiences, and
media images. An artistic understanding of "reality" combines with the
archiving and transformation of found images. In this vein, Peter Doig
commented on the photos he collects in folders and sketchbooks: "To a
certain extent, I use them like maps, as a means for putting a foot into
the kind of reality I wish for."
The everyday seems to penetrate
many of the younger contemporary art works in the bank building at
Roßmarkt; regardless of whether it appears magical, as in the works of
Peyton or Doig, digitally reworked and manipulated, as is the case with
Yanagi's works, or as design photographed and reinterpreted into painting
in the case of the Germans
Kocheisen + Hullmann – its visualization always opens up an arsenal of
interpretations and projections. "It's always a hundred years ago," Adrian
Searle wrote in the Guardian on Peter Doig's exhibition One Hundred
Years Ago, "and it's always today – wow."
Whoever hopes to find unequivocal statements and clear positions on social
questions in contemporary art might well be disappointed by the works of
artists such as Peyton, Doig, or Yanagi. Whoever wants to experience
something of the future of the society we are leaving behind us day by
day, however, might well appreciate these works as marking points in a
fascinating and incalculable world
Thomas Kocheisen/ Ulrike Hullmann, Untitled, 1997
©Kocheisen + Hullmann, Seelbach; Deutsche Bank Collection
.
Oliver Koerner von Gustorf
Translation: Andrea
Scrima
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