Re-Institutionalize # 01: SALON PICASSO (2004)

View Quicktime movie / View Windows Media movie

Exhibition of 10 re-drawings of childrens re-drawings of Picasso drawings at a turkish hairdressers called Salon Picasso “ in Soldiner Kiez, Berlin.

Excerpts from an interview by Heike Wetzig:

The art world was not invited and information not available in the exhibition. Why this concealment?

This kind of show has its own public, actually no art public. A hairdresser simply needs customers. And I think its necessary that the art world gets informed only later: Such places are discovered alone or by two, and accidentally. It is difficult to mediate this experience without destroying it!

Do you see it as a subversive project? You make it in that secession outside official exhibition grounds: One could suspect that the usual art institutions do not appreciate your work sufficiently. How would you describe your motivation?

The motivation is a little bit of all the things you mentioned. Frustration and failure as creative energies are a romantic clich but also everyday reality: To handle them subversively or with a sense of humour opens up chances which would stay unknown otherwise. Most people are but afraid of the failure and the frustration and dont want to admit these feelings. Artists exhibit, for example, in cafs, presumably if there are no regular shows offered to them; and then they want it to look as in a gallery. Trying to ignore the place means to fail.