Das monochrome Gold der zwei ausgestellten Bilder kann weggerubbelt und die darunterliegende Schicht freigelegt werden. In einem Fall befindet sich in der unteren Schicht ein anderes Bild. Im anderen Fall ist diese Schicht leer. Es kann jeweils nur ein Bild erworben werden, wobei der Kaufpreis, sollte die leere Schicht beim erworbenen Bild freigelegt werden, mehr als ersetzt wird.

The Artist works with simple words, sometimes letters or numbers, out of which he forms set phrases. He acts in accordance with the basic premises of conceptual poetry in which, as Eugen Gomringer puts it, “all that is necessary is the rhythmic succession of ordered syllables.; the text merely exists without need of any sublime, explanatory additions: bare, naked, alone”.

This kind of reading is process-orientated:it no longer believes in the notion of a single pregnant moment, in which the meaning of an artwork reveals itself as sublime experience. The model of art as a conveyor of fixe symbolic ideas or messages is substituted here with one that involves an indeterminate , unsettled process. These are no longer problems for the artist, but rather for the spectator, as he/she looks at all these things together and is forced to create a perceptual relationship between them.

Consequently viewers come to realize that, instead of reading, they themselves were being read by the surrounding text, and that the word “between” aptly conveyed its meaning by precisely defining the place of the viewer in relation to the work.

Thus a unique aesthetics of inappropriateness is created, which is characterised by the interactivity of the content, a kind of visual chatting and a sub-cultural reserve to large themes and established social mechanisms. Scepticism for the privileged position of the artist, which is a primary element of art’s social institutionalisation, therefor the viewer finds himself in the position of an intruder, intimidated by heavy concentration of detail and the difficulty of perceiving the whole work.

He juxtaposes real objects with images, reflections in the mirror in the lid, marked by the artist’s recognizable stamp, the “inscription”. In the reflection, the objects merge with the inscription, forming the image of a memento, an illegible reflection of the artist’s memory.

The reproductory character is signalled by the grainy ben-day dot structure of the original images. He gathers and preserves those images fpr quite a while, until a seection established itself, the cropping imposes itself and the images acquire some secret autobiographical meaning. He sometimes combines them with small poems also composed from ready-made sentences cut out of magazines. In spite of recurrent motifs such as gestures of the hands, the images never give away their significance at first glance. Nothing is hidden, but everything remains inpenetrable. In his work the spectator is first held at a distance before being invited to come closer and emerge him – or herself in the image’s grain, until a whole world suddenly blooms, like a japanes haiku.

The challenge for the person who faces his work is immediate and inevitable; the viewer is not merely a passive recipient of the work. He/She becomes an active and participating constituent of that experience of the world and the self which the artwork brings forth. As a viewer you are not exclusively seduced by (or into) the artworks – you neither transcend yourself nor transgress your own limits in a metaphysical dimension. The convergence among body , sense perception and world transpires on an equal footing, at the same time the meeting is inevitable. In order to sense the artwork and grasp the cross field of scientific and aesthetic precepts that are being put into play , you have to have your body activated all the while, and often you actually have to be “in motion”.

The title – which of course has to be read humorously – suggests an open-minded daring artistic attitude, inscribed perhaps in the ambivalent practice of appropriation; or else it described a tendency to reach beyond well established strategies of contemporary art such as parody, irony and copying.

If the art is primarily a expression of creativity, it also witnesses to a cultural, economic and social reality marked by constant shifts in power, political and cultural isolation, war, post-war economics crisis, disintegration of the system of values, general social tension and melancholy. To determine whether art is contemporary or not, as John Cage has emphasized, one must not use aesthetic, but social criteria. One must view the creative ideas of the artists in their social-historical and cultural contexts, rejecting a simple one-dimensional approach in favor of multiple perspective.

The work presents an astonishing combination of nature an d technology . The carefully chosen material is handled with great respect and sensuality.

It success hinges on the revelance of the confrontation and the subleties of the hanging. The installation will be the outcome of the artist collaboration with the curator, on equal footing.

In seiner aktuellen Arbeit untersucht Henrik Hentschel (geb. 1978, Leipzig) das Verhältnis von Erinnerung und Imagination beim Lesen eines Textes. Der gezeigte Ausschnitt gibt nur wenig preis, das eben Gelesene verschwindet gleich wieder aus dem Bild und der Sinn lässt nur mithilfe der Erinnerung erschliessen. Da der Text aus einer Kompilation unterschiedlicher Texte zur Gegenwartskunst besteht und sich zudem widerspricht, ist die Sinnsuche nicht das Hauptziel. Hentschel fokussiert stattdessen die Frage nach der Autorenschaft und die Frage danach, welche Rolle die Erinnerung bei der Erkenntnis spielt.
In seinen Arbeiten beschäftigt er sich grundsätzlich mit Fragen nach Kontext, Autorschaft und Produktionsprozessen. – Wie entsteht ein Kunstwerk? Wann werden Prozesse der Wiederholung schöpferisch? Was ist Originalität? Und wie steht es um das Verhältnis von Künstler, Werk und Betrachter? Dazu bedient sich der Künstler unterschiedlicher Medien gleichzeitig. Denn die spannenden Entwicklungen ereignen sich seiner Meinung nach in den Übergängen und Zwischenbereichen unterschiedlicher Medien. Seine Vorgehensweise entstammt einer konzeptuellen Haltung. Im Vordergrund steht die formulierte Idee und ihre mögliche Umsetzung. Diese soll keine abschliessende Antwort auf das künstlerische Problem sein. Vielmehr versteht Hentschel seine Kunst als Möglichkeit, Richtungen aufzuzeigen und Kommentare zur Gegenwart und zur Kunst abzugeben. Die Beantwortung der Fragen hingegen überlässt er den Betrachtern.