Olaf Stüber

Wohin mit den Alten

18 Mar - 05 May 2006

Johannes Spehr
WOHIN MIT DEN ALTEN
Baldur Burwitz, Thierry Geoffro/ Colonel;
Jill Miller, Henrik Schrat, Johannes Spehr
March 18 - May 5, 2006

The demographic pyramid has been turned upside down. The "generation golf" is relentlessly moving towards “generation 50+". Gerontocrats are waiting in the wings. So what should we do with the elderly? Use them? Recycle them? Dispose of them? Politics does not seem to have any answers.

In Johannes Spehr’s work dead mangers undergo a process of renaturalisation and are fed back into the food chain. Did something just happen? Is it possible to recycle pensioners? Soilent Green?

But maybe the young ones are the old masters, like in Jill Millers cool remake of John Baldassari’s video 'I am making art,’ now called 'I am making art too’.

Or do we owe the elderly more respect, like Colonel, who without further ado collected the unicum posters of a Christian Boltanski project from around the city of Copenhagen in order to put them back into a befitting artistic context?

Baldur Burwitz shows that pensioners are also going to have fun in the future. He lets the protagonists hover through the air in a loop sequence. Thyssen Krupp’s stair lift makes it possible!

And Henrik Schrat’s life size “pension fighters” leave the viewer to decide if they are dealing with retired warriors or elderly persons who have reached for guns to fight for their pension.

The exhibition is socially and politically engaging and cynical and it also touches a sore spotthat is not yet present but already very painful... And it is entertaining.
 

Tags: Christian Boltanski, Baldur Burwitz, Colonel, Henrik Schrat, Johannes Spehr