Thomas Winkler
25 Apr - 30 May 2015
THOMAS WINKLER
25 April - 30 May 2015
Interview (english version)
André Butzer – Prof. Winkler
Butzer: Just recently you left your job as assistant professor for Visual Design at the Technical University for Visual Arts in Wuerzburg. Why did Michael Asher or Baldessari leave such an impression on you with their art, their sketches and design?
Winkler: Myself, Prof. Winkler, I am happy to welcome all of you to this interview. It is an honour to me to answer all your questions one by one.
Butzer: I’ll ask differently: why have you and your forms of expression become so exemplary? Your audience, which is still small, recognizes itself and is happy for you and your conduct of life.
Winkler: The pleasure is on my side. But I do not bear a proper life. And an audience or spectators do not exist. People offer themselves as role-models, which I respect without critique in order to become part of their mission. Everyone who becomes aware of himself is happy about and for himself. That’s the way I learnt it from Michael Asher, Baldessari and from you.
Butzer: Right. But actually you are not here with us. Everything visible of you are just proove and traces showing that you came down with your cause as much as possible in order to make yourself replaceable. This is not the way you really exist. Or you just exist in as far that we feel what is being left of you while reducing the visual parts of what you bring about. This is probably the most popular way to produce art, similar to the way how On Kawara made himself and his time of the day subject of his art. The outcome is a big sadness about the results of art, but this great humility makes you and the onlookers happy for a moment. But you are right, there is no audience, at least not for us.
Winkler: We have no interest in doubling our selves to produce loneliness artificially. By the way I am not anymore a great fan of On Kawara. When I saw one of his works for the first time, I thought that I had understood the essence of art rudimentary. This of course was a great mistake. Nevertheless his art triggered off a kind of “sadness about the results” as you named it, which dissolved itself only many years later. That was exactly on July 23, 2003 when I made my first piece of art nearby Geneva. On Kawara made this possible for me. Because, in the beginning, my art took place on the backside of his paintings, not literally of course. That’s why I have no spectators but he has so many. I plan to to get out of this process. Perhaps by submerging or by risking my job negligently.
Butzer: One can’t say much about it. Everything became more inaccessible about you, but in the same time more systematic. Who acts out with so much comprehensibility, has to come to an end, at least preliminarily. This could rather be compared with an overestimated Duchamp and a far-reaching insight, but without silence. A concession from your side, a rest made of clarity. Instead of being silent you start to explain something. You left the scheme of telling behind. But at any cost? No one, not even myself, can understand you anymore. Nobody evaluates the position you chose, it is not appraisable. Everything is open and everything what you do happens on your own.
Winkler: I would not say that there is no solution, because there is no problem. I do not know what real freedom is.
The deeper insight out of which a human being begins to be silent might be the same reason why he starts to sing. My media, however, is well known. I do advertisment, of which I am client, producer and onlooker in the same time. My campaign is to daily convince myself of things I otherwise would not know of that they exist. The art is to cheat the customer as little as possible. This is so to speak the campaign of my life and so far it works really well. I do daily surveys with me and find out increasing rates in remembering. From day to day my life became more beautiful and shorter. The price actually is unbearable.
Butzer: I am happy that we can speak so honestly with each other. Everything what we say shall make clear, at which life-pervading enterprise we are taking part. I believe that your form of art is a wonderful possibility to present a great agony that mankind is suffering since industrialization. But also their continuing want for happiness, for tenderness, is given form hereby. What, by the way, is form for you, meaning is your form just a loop way in order to be emotional? Or does this kind of emotion, of which we speak, do not exist yet? This would be a great prospect on the coming end of art in general, a nice moment when art could start anew, through an emotion. I believe that all artists who want to realize something really beautiful, want to have a new beginning.
Winkler: I do not know what form is. But a young girl told me after an exhibition, that this kind of presentation reminds her of the documentation of her school trip: „Here, Alexandra caught a frog. There, we sang a song. And that’s what we had for lunch.” In this sense form is something for me of which I believe that it has just been.
Published in Meise No. 4, Publishing House Heckler und Koch, Berlin, 2007
25 April - 30 May 2015
Interview (english version)
André Butzer – Prof. Winkler
Butzer: Just recently you left your job as assistant professor for Visual Design at the Technical University for Visual Arts in Wuerzburg. Why did Michael Asher or Baldessari leave such an impression on you with their art, their sketches and design?
Winkler: Myself, Prof. Winkler, I am happy to welcome all of you to this interview. It is an honour to me to answer all your questions one by one.
Butzer: I’ll ask differently: why have you and your forms of expression become so exemplary? Your audience, which is still small, recognizes itself and is happy for you and your conduct of life.
Winkler: The pleasure is on my side. But I do not bear a proper life. And an audience or spectators do not exist. People offer themselves as role-models, which I respect without critique in order to become part of their mission. Everyone who becomes aware of himself is happy about and for himself. That’s the way I learnt it from Michael Asher, Baldessari and from you.
Butzer: Right. But actually you are not here with us. Everything visible of you are just proove and traces showing that you came down with your cause as much as possible in order to make yourself replaceable. This is not the way you really exist. Or you just exist in as far that we feel what is being left of you while reducing the visual parts of what you bring about. This is probably the most popular way to produce art, similar to the way how On Kawara made himself and his time of the day subject of his art. The outcome is a big sadness about the results of art, but this great humility makes you and the onlookers happy for a moment. But you are right, there is no audience, at least not for us.
Winkler: We have no interest in doubling our selves to produce loneliness artificially. By the way I am not anymore a great fan of On Kawara. When I saw one of his works for the first time, I thought that I had understood the essence of art rudimentary. This of course was a great mistake. Nevertheless his art triggered off a kind of “sadness about the results” as you named it, which dissolved itself only many years later. That was exactly on July 23, 2003 when I made my first piece of art nearby Geneva. On Kawara made this possible for me. Because, in the beginning, my art took place on the backside of his paintings, not literally of course. That’s why I have no spectators but he has so many. I plan to to get out of this process. Perhaps by submerging or by risking my job negligently.
Butzer: One can’t say much about it. Everything became more inaccessible about you, but in the same time more systematic. Who acts out with so much comprehensibility, has to come to an end, at least preliminarily. This could rather be compared with an overestimated Duchamp and a far-reaching insight, but without silence. A concession from your side, a rest made of clarity. Instead of being silent you start to explain something. You left the scheme of telling behind. But at any cost? No one, not even myself, can understand you anymore. Nobody evaluates the position you chose, it is not appraisable. Everything is open and everything what you do happens on your own.
Winkler: I would not say that there is no solution, because there is no problem. I do not know what real freedom is.
The deeper insight out of which a human being begins to be silent might be the same reason why he starts to sing. My media, however, is well known. I do advertisment, of which I am client, producer and onlooker in the same time. My campaign is to daily convince myself of things I otherwise would not know of that they exist. The art is to cheat the customer as little as possible. This is so to speak the campaign of my life and so far it works really well. I do daily surveys with me and find out increasing rates in remembering. From day to day my life became more beautiful and shorter. The price actually is unbearable.
Butzer: I am happy that we can speak so honestly with each other. Everything what we say shall make clear, at which life-pervading enterprise we are taking part. I believe that your form of art is a wonderful possibility to present a great agony that mankind is suffering since industrialization. But also their continuing want for happiness, for tenderness, is given form hereby. What, by the way, is form for you, meaning is your form just a loop way in order to be emotional? Or does this kind of emotion, of which we speak, do not exist yet? This would be a great prospect on the coming end of art in general, a nice moment when art could start anew, through an emotion. I believe that all artists who want to realize something really beautiful, want to have a new beginning.
Winkler: I do not know what form is. But a young girl told me after an exhibition, that this kind of presentation reminds her of the documentation of her school trip: „Here, Alexandra caught a frog. There, we sang a song. And that’s what we had for lunch.” In this sense form is something for me of which I believe that it has just been.
Published in Meise No. 4, Publishing House Heckler und Koch, Berlin, 2007