Q: Sie wählen als Medium für Ihre Arbeit bevorzugt Durckgraphik - und Sie haben Ihre Blätter auch immer wieder etwa über ebay angeboten. Beides spricht dafür, daß Sie mehr und andere Menschen erreichen wollen als Künstler, die etwa mit Öl auf Leinwand malen und davon träumen, eine Ausstellung in einer berühmten Galerie zu bekommen. Geht es Ihnen mit Ihrer Kunst also darum, bestimmte Botschaften zu transportieren, ja sehen Sie sich als politischen Künstler an?


A: Also ich finde man sollte als Künstler immer versuchen, bestimmte Botschaften zu transportieren, die auch ruhig politisch sein können. Der Umkehrschluss wäre doch sehr grimmig und todlangweilig, oder? Auch wenn mich alle Galeristen, Kuratoren und Sammler dafür ans Kreuz nageln, möchte ich doch wieder zu einer Kunst kommen, die nicht vollständig vage, offen und eben unbestimmt ist. Ich habe ein wenig nach dem Prinzip gehandelt: "Was passiert wohl, wenn ich dem Kunstsystem unter gegebenen Bedingungen mal ein Kunstwerk mit einer bestimmten Aussage ausstelle?" Titel wie "Promis sind Affen" oder "Marketing ist Scheiße" waren schon sehr direkt und trotzdem haben mich immer wieder Leute gefragt, was ich damit meine. Früher habe ich diese Phrase "er oder sie bricht mit seinen grauen Quadraten Sehgewohnheiten" nie verstanden. Aber wenn man, wie ich in diesem Fall, mal wirklich etwas gegen den Strich bürstet, stehen plötzlich diese blumigen Sehgewohnheiten wie eine Wand vor einem. - Ganz ehrlich muss ich aber auch sagen, dass ich die Welt um uns herum nicht verstehe. Meine Botschaften können daher nie wasserdicht sein, aber trotzdem lege ich irgendwie die Hand für sie ins Feuer. Ich spüre das eine Botschaft oder Aussage jetzt richtig ist. Aber eine Garantie oder Haftung kann ich da leider nicht übernehmen, obwohl ich das vielleicht gerne täte. Aber für mich kommt es auf den Versuch an. Ich finde eine Kunst, die versucht sich genau auszudrücken, zurzeit ästhetisch überlegen. Ich glaube, das setzt sich am Ende durch, auch wenn es jetzt noch gar nicht danach aussieht.


Artists should communicate a message. Or at least try. It would be simply too grim and boring if the opposite was true. I do wish art would be more meaningful than it is today. That’s why, in a way, I tried to experiment with meaning. I had titles like "Celebs are baboons" or "Marketing is bullshit". They were so precise and direct, and yet still people were asking me what I meant. That amazed me. You know, I never understood the phrase "breaking visual habits", especially when they were being broken by harmless gray squares. But once I swam against the tide, those happy little visual habits suddenly stood in front of me like a giant wall. So it’s very difficult to get some meaning across, and the failure rate is currently close to 100%. But you just have to try, even if most critics and collectors and curators don’t like it at all. I am a long way away from statements that are carved in stone. And I can’t say that I can make sense of the world around us. But I strongly believe in the things I say. I try to make sense of it all. And that’s what counts for me in terms of art. I think that art that tries to mean something is aesthetically superior. And this art will prevail even if, at the moment, it doesn’t look that way at all.


Q: Ihre Skepsis gegenüber einer offenen und unbestimmten Kunst ist tatsächlich ungewöhnlich. Und die Reaktionen auf Ihre Arbeiten zeigen, wie sehr das Kunstpublikum daran gewöhnt ist, daß alles vieldeutig ist. Sonst käme man ja wohl nicht darauf, auch noch bei einer Aussage wie "Marketing ist scheiße" eigens nach dem Sinn zu fragen. Das heißt aber auch: Sobald ein Künslter mit einer bestimmten Botschaft im Kunstbetrieb auftaucht, droht diese ins Unbestimmte und Vage verwässert zu werden. Kann man also innerhalb der Kunst überhaupt noch politische Statements anbringen, ja müßte sich, wem es wirklich um bestimmte Aussagen geht, nicht lieber in einem anderen Feld engagieren? Oder, als Frage an Sie formuliert: Was ist die 'differentia specifica' der Kunst, die Sie so schätzen, daß Sie sich als Künstler verstehen? Tja. Viele Politiker denken zum Beispiel, wenn sie an Kunst denken an einen unschuldigen und schützenwerten Bereich. Der Künstler darf machen was er will, und der Galerist entdeckt ihn, und der Sammler hat den Künstler lieb. Das ist völliger Blödsinn und eine krasse Fehleinschätzung. Kunst ist ein hart umkämpfter politischer Aushandlungsort. Hier werden vorpolitische Begriffe und Werte entwickelt, die gesamtgesellschaftlich ausstrahlen. Es ist in meinen Augen völlig wahnsinnig, dieses Feld den marktradikalen Kunstfunktionären zu überlassen. Natürlich haben die ein Interesse an einer Verwässerung. Das hat hat innerhalb der Kunst zu einer großen Lähmung geführt. Wenn ich heute durch die Galerien und Museen gehe, sehe ich meistens so schlappe Pop-Arbeiten, die eine offene Tür nach der anderen einrennen. Da hätte sich wahrscheinlich sogar Andy Warhol gelangweilt.


Politicians here in Germany, for example, think that art is innocent and needs to be protected. Artists do whatever they can to get discovered by gallerists and appreciated by collectors. But that’s bullshit, and nothing could be more wrong. Art is a battlefield for political ideas. New terms and values start off there and radiate into society. From my point of view, it’s utter madness to leave this field unchallenged to the money-side of art and its agents. They, of course, have a natural interest in watering down issues. That has lead us to the total paralysis of ideas in art. When I go to galleries and museums, I mostly see lame pop-art that indifferently states the obvious. I bet even Andy Warhol would have been bored stiff.

Magic?

WU: I admit I'm being a bit old-fashioned here in wanting to be astounded and enthralled. The ability to leave me guessing how an artist has managed to achieve a certain effect is, for me, at least a secondary virtue of a work of art, if not one of its duties…

JA: I know this feeling very well, when you’re standing in front of a work of art and are thinking: my goodness, how did he or she do that? A floating basketball, a snowstorm that constantly snows, a perfect fire sculpture made out of plastic or a well-painted hand. That is wonderful magic. Good technique remains in the background. With many hyperrealistic paintings, I can’t help but think of the huge effort that painters and their assistants have made. What then shocks me is when a work like this stands before me in a totally neutral way. That is probably the dark side of a technique that, rather than enchanting me, hypnotises me through its technical effort…There is an ethical difference between ‘enchant’ and ‘hypnotise’ that we should define more clearly.

WU: Yes, these differences are important here…But there is always a fascination with the scandalous, with something that should not be. Artists have increasingly sought this kind of fascination too – often at the cost of that professional eroticism which can enchant. Only a few, like Damien Hirst, master both: enchantment and scandalous fascination.

JA: I’m no longer attracted to the scandalous aspect. If everything is already screaming, it is a grubby tactic to try and top it all…To put it bluntly, business studies have hit the inner sanctum of art and the artist. However, it’s not possible to completely colonise the ‘enchantment’, which takes place beyond the sphere of business relations. It is therefore never completely futile to dream of freedom…In any case, I firmly believe that the whole fun of art lies in its ability to change. We should therefore not take the status quo so seriously. We should not cast it in concrete and consign it to the history books. I find today's hustle and bustle extremely suspect. The more active art becomes, the less chance it has of changing. I become very argumentative in relation to this rigidity because I can see that we've already had enough of this stuff. Everything is a repeat...

WU: So…you want to take a stand in an art arena that is (too) market orientated. Are you not yourself, therefore, a part of that since your political commitment relates directly to it?...Do you see yourself primarily as an analyst of the business, so that your art can be classified under the label 'institutional critique'?

JA: For me, it’s a journey where you encounter this and that, which you then attempt to describe precisely. And then you see that it is not only the art arena that is too market orientated, but that it is a much greater phenomenon. My criticism of the art arena is therefore more of an example…I think that the diagnosis of an increasing economisation of different areas of life is a fitting one. Perhaps you can say that capitalism is expanding into life’s inner sanctum according to its geographical spread and implementation. In this way, many areas of life, not only art, are accelerating rapidly and, as a result, seem to be becoming more unclear… It's important in the midst of all this acceleration and jubilation to stand up and say ‘something's not right’, or ‘I imagined that completely differently’, or perhaps ‘that is somehow sad’. Sometimes, a ‘yippee’ is also right. I want to make a point with these feelings. I want to regain control or go on the offensive. I suppose that I'm not the only one who has not yet arrived in paradise. I try to reach a clearer position in order to find a common ground. And perhaps it’s then possible to say: we're no longer afraid of profit-maximising experts and are fashioning a new utopia.

WU: Should the ‘new utopia’ that you talk about be an island in the sea of acceleration or the seed of an entirely new world order?

JA: ‘New world orders’ are somehow no longer credible so I have difficulty with this concept. But to clarify, I do not like the world that is presented to me. And I would therefore be happy if we could recapture the feeling that the future can be shaped, which in my mind is possible. That is why we have got to build things again, however small and insignificant they may be, without immediately deconstructing them or subjecting them to the cynical logic of political insiders. Visions are important. We must first create them and then we will be able to see further.

Johannes Albers makes works of art that appear to be telling a joke. At first, at least. They are definitely  pleasant to look at. But when one looks a little harder they tend to become a bit unsettling. Or so it seemed to me, while I was walking among them. The Berlin based artist whose work can be seen these days at his exhibition at the Michael Fuchs Galerie in Mitte, says that all he does is try to make life a little easier to explain. It is a little like telling a joke at your favourite aunt’s funeral. Or like offering a Christmas present. Is then nothing what it seems? Who knows. Life is a mystery and then we die; but in the meantime we cannot help trying to make some sense of it. So what. “To celebrate life, you cannot really want to be a winner”, says Johannes Albers.

Read the interview here.