Leif Magne Tangen on Artmap.com

ESSAY: ONLY ONLY WRITTEN BY LEIF MAGNE TANGEN / FILTERED BY ØYSTEIN AASAN CATALOGUE TEXT, KLARTEXT BERLIN, KUNSTRAUM NIEDERÖSTERREICH, P. 15, VIENNA, AUSTRIA, ISBN 3-9502078-5-6

Suppose an artist exhibits text in an art exhibition. The text states something that involves the museum and its doing. The spectator is intended to read the words like an installation, “straight”, like a painting might be read. But because the text (or installation, if you please) is mounted in an art ambience, it is implied that the object (letters cut out in a large structure made of cardboard and wood) carries conventional “visual art” content. The spectator, puzzled, not being able to grasp any direct, normal art-meaning. He starts to decipher it. The text, or the statement reads as follows: “Museum without walls”

Words are not only written. They are as well sung (They could as well be). Although the stacked CD's has a sculptural element to them, they have to be evaluated in terms of the content expressed in the words. Then, in an obvious established sense, many people would say: if it has a connection with art at all, it fits better into the category of “performance” rather than “sculptural installation”. This at least admits the observation: when an artist uses “(a piece of) text” in this context, he is not using such an object in the way the art audience did expect (unexpectedly). “There's a hole in Daddy's arm where all the money goes / Jesus Christ died for nothing, I suppose”(John Prine).

photo: Øystein Aasan, "Museum witout Walls (2005, Wall)", installation view,
Sørlandet Museum for Contemporary Art, 2005