Meuser
17 May - 06 Jul 2013
MEUSER
Kopfkissen ohne Bettdecke
17 May - 6 July 2013
Approximately two years ago I spent a few days in Meuser ́s house in Düsseldorf-Lohausen. I was in the process of moving to Düsseldorf, and Meuser offered me his attic flat for a short transitional period. There was a bed, a table, a chair, a lamp. Aeroplanes flew by over the house, behind it was an overgrown garden with large trees and many blossoms. Not far away from the house lies the Rhine, which winds in a loop and holds the Lantz ́sche Park in its curve. Meuser and I spent some days here together. On the Sunday after my arrival, he mended the ladies ́ bicycle and showed me around the area. We drove down straight roads through fields, past paddocks over the dyke in the direction of Kaiserswerth, then through the park, Meuser always taking the lead, his tie and coat in the wind. He was ahead of me in many ways, particularly in the mornings. When I stepped out from my small residence under the roof, it appeared as if he had already been sitting at the large wood table in the living room for hours. To his right side was the terrace door, his gaze was focused on the sheet of paper before him with concentration. I watched him like this a few times without asking. But I wondered, I was curious. After some days I asked him what he was doing there. Lottery numbers, he said. On the sheet he drew small boxes of consistently equal size, and filled them thoughtfully, sometimes ruminatively, but deliberately and steadily with numbers. In these morning hours, drinking tea, it was difficult for me to determine where these combinatorics were supposed to lead. Meuser carried out each action with great concentration, keeping his eye on the result. This movement compelled me to spin it further my own thoughts. I asked myself, how it would look, if one were to assign a word or a sentence to each number which he noted in his mathematical cartography. A breach of logic would be the result, returning fragments, a circling of thoughts, a perception in loops.
In the evenings I read Meuser ́s catalogues. In the book "Knautsch" there is a conversation between him and Franz Ackermann, at one point they speak of the banality of language, of own forms of language, which Meuser describes with the example of the Ruhrpott, its special dynamics, its unexcited self-assertion, following the thought: "Once without everything." My idea, which emanated from his lottery numbers, did not let me go. I bought postcards and sent them to my friends in Karlsruhe, the place which I was leaving for Düsseldorf. I assigned a number to each sentence, then I set an arbitrary sequence of numbers to this allocation, in order to break up the meaning of the writing, to give the individual sentences a new context of meaning, viewing the recombination of the individual elements at the fore. I called this form: coded poems.
This form underlies my present approach to his work, new sculptures and drawings, which he is showing in his current solo exhibition at Meyer Riegger Karlsruhe.
1 Objects made of metal, seem found
2 The material substance is shaped and positioned
3 Sanded, polished, painted surface texture
4 Local reference
5 Dusty coal hatching on a dull ground
6 Space and body form space-bodies
7 Gestures of action, minimal
8 Autonomous narration, demarcation of structure
9 Outcome: Contour and shape
7 2 4 8 1 3 9 4 4 6 2 7 3 1 8 5 6 9 7 2 7 3 6
Christina Irrgang
Düsseldorf, May 2013
translation by Zoe Miller
Kopfkissen ohne Bettdecke
17 May - 6 July 2013
Approximately two years ago I spent a few days in Meuser ́s house in Düsseldorf-Lohausen. I was in the process of moving to Düsseldorf, and Meuser offered me his attic flat for a short transitional period. There was a bed, a table, a chair, a lamp. Aeroplanes flew by over the house, behind it was an overgrown garden with large trees and many blossoms. Not far away from the house lies the Rhine, which winds in a loop and holds the Lantz ́sche Park in its curve. Meuser and I spent some days here together. On the Sunday after my arrival, he mended the ladies ́ bicycle and showed me around the area. We drove down straight roads through fields, past paddocks over the dyke in the direction of Kaiserswerth, then through the park, Meuser always taking the lead, his tie and coat in the wind. He was ahead of me in many ways, particularly in the mornings. When I stepped out from my small residence under the roof, it appeared as if he had already been sitting at the large wood table in the living room for hours. To his right side was the terrace door, his gaze was focused on the sheet of paper before him with concentration. I watched him like this a few times without asking. But I wondered, I was curious. After some days I asked him what he was doing there. Lottery numbers, he said. On the sheet he drew small boxes of consistently equal size, and filled them thoughtfully, sometimes ruminatively, but deliberately and steadily with numbers. In these morning hours, drinking tea, it was difficult for me to determine where these combinatorics were supposed to lead. Meuser carried out each action with great concentration, keeping his eye on the result. This movement compelled me to spin it further my own thoughts. I asked myself, how it would look, if one were to assign a word or a sentence to each number which he noted in his mathematical cartography. A breach of logic would be the result, returning fragments, a circling of thoughts, a perception in loops.
In the evenings I read Meuser ́s catalogues. In the book "Knautsch" there is a conversation between him and Franz Ackermann, at one point they speak of the banality of language, of own forms of language, which Meuser describes with the example of the Ruhrpott, its special dynamics, its unexcited self-assertion, following the thought: "Once without everything." My idea, which emanated from his lottery numbers, did not let me go. I bought postcards and sent them to my friends in Karlsruhe, the place which I was leaving for Düsseldorf. I assigned a number to each sentence, then I set an arbitrary sequence of numbers to this allocation, in order to break up the meaning of the writing, to give the individual sentences a new context of meaning, viewing the recombination of the individual elements at the fore. I called this form: coded poems.
This form underlies my present approach to his work, new sculptures and drawings, which he is showing in his current solo exhibition at Meyer Riegger Karlsruhe.
1 Objects made of metal, seem found
2 The material substance is shaped and positioned
3 Sanded, polished, painted surface texture
4 Local reference
5 Dusty coal hatching on a dull ground
6 Space and body form space-bodies
7 Gestures of action, minimal
8 Autonomous narration, demarcation of structure
9 Outcome: Contour and shape
7 2 4 8 1 3 9 4 4 6 2 7 3 1 8 5 6 9 7 2 7 3 6
Christina Irrgang
Düsseldorf, May 2013
translation by Zoe Miller