Franz Ackermann: Ohne Titel (Mental
Mapno.54, beauties with kitchen), 1994
©Franz Ackermann, Deutsche Bank Collection
Indeed, Ackermann reacts to the apparent complexity of modern urban space
with a "comparative topography," as he calls it. There is no hierarchy
capable of ordering this allover of buildings, colorful flashes, and
block-like architecture. Here, however, Ackermann is anything but a naive
tourist marveling at the sights; he is concerned with establishing a
connection to the social reality everyone is subjected to, everywhere
around the world. Despite this, his graphic explorations become something
like a symbol of the wider restlessness that's kept at least the art world
in motion, from biennial to biennial. It fit all too well to the notion of
a world on its toes, whose continuous mobility has been reflected in
business life, as well, in the makeshift conference room at the airport.
For Ackermann, the fact that we've increasingly come to resemble hamsters in
treadmills is a paradox that has found expression in his way of working:
"the idea of an office on the beach never worked. The only thing I learned
from all of this has been the fact that you have to be ready to compromise
at all times. Then, the hotel becomes the studio, and the table next to
the bed is the drawing table. Basically, more than anything else, I'm one
thing - not at home, everywhere around the world."
Franz Ackermann: Permanent Departure, 2003 © Franz Ackermann,
Courtesy of neugeriemschneider, Berlin, Germany
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It was only after the 11th of September that limitations
were once again placed upon the availability of time and space. For
Ackermann, the catastrophe was a dramatic cut; it suddenly became clear
that territories were still being fought over that had long since escaped
notice in the delirium of globalization. In terms of his work, the threat
has penetrated into his choice of subjects; his new Mental Maps
more and more frequently bear titles such as just more riots or incredible
terrible beautiful. Yet it would be wrong to locate the danger in the
incalculability of current political strife. It comes as no surprise that
the series of drawings and paintings he showed during the summer of 2003
in the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg was called Naherholungsgebiet (Local
Recreation Area). Here, recreation finds its counterpart in aggressively
turbulent ink landscapes in which helicopters and skyscrapers enter the
drawn page's edges like a collar closing in on a blank white space. Then,
everything presses into the middle again, producing bulky knots out of
which individual colorful threads emerge, as though the imagined location
of desire were an amputated heart.
Franz Ackermann: Ohne Titel (golf), 1993
©Franz Ackermann, Deutsche Bank Collection
The conflict between the center and the periphery is drawing nearer - this
is the cartography of crisis that drawings such as permanent departure
or clever shopping stand for. In contrast to an earlier romantic idea
of traveling to lose oneself in the labyrinth of a transformed everyday,
Ackermann instead perceives the changes arising out of a tense world
situation: "Since September 11, no one talks about a desire for faraway
exotic places anymore; wellness right here at home is what they want." At
the same time, the last vestiges of a longing to couple one's own
expectations with the other have disappeared; for Ackermann, this
disappointment is another after-effect of globalization: "from Hong Kong
to South Africa, parks and shopping malls all look alike." To this
purpose, a specific iconography emphasizing individual features isn't
necessary, because "in assimilation, everything becomes the same abstract
material."
In one respect, however, Ackermann's curiosity
hasn't abated. Although he used to travel on planes for days on end, and
always with a faraway destination in mind, he has now become an alert
observer, even on very short trips. When he rides his bike to the studio,
he perceives Berlin as a collection of garden colonies and wasteland areas
stretching to either side of the banks of the river Spree. The city
proliferates in both directions - further into urban chaos and, in the
post-industrial age, back to a terra incognita.
Translation: Andrea Scrima
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