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[This is an English version arrived at via Google Translate; click here for the original newspaper page in German and scroll to the bottom right of that page.]

"Portrait of the Artist as a Mattress," by
Lisa Zeitz, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, August 11, 2001; SECTION: Art Market, p. 53; LENGTH: 727 words

HEADLINE:
Portrait of the Artist as a Mattress

HIGHLIGHT:
An exhibition at The Spencer Brownstone Gallery in Soho

NEW YORK, August

Why is everyone in New York crazy in August? Because the psychiatrists are on vacation then--so goes a saying that the American approach to its Cultural capital to brings the point. Summer in New York: The cities flee to the beach Coney between Iceland and Montauk or pull back into the country and spend time in the forests of the Hudson River Valley. A serious minority following her yoga teacher in the meditation camp in Ireland. If despite muggy heat the Streets and gothic chill in the public buildings in Manhattan remains can choose between exquisite pleasures. In Central Park plays the Philharmonic occurs free in the open air, and Meryl Streep in a play Shakespeare on. The PSI in Queens, for some time with the Museum of Modern Art affiliated, offers weekend disco and pool. On the greenery behind the New York Public Library there is an open-air cinema and on the roof of the Metropolitan Museum espresso. For the galleries, if they have not closed, the summer group exhibitions.

With ten artists has Irena Popiashvili under the Entitled "Screen" at the Spencer Brownstone Gallery in Soho, an exhibition organizing photos and video works. Susa Templin, born 1965, lives in Frankfurt and New York. Your two photos show the height of Manhattan as swimming pools blue voids within the densely built-up area, a kind of architecture Nothing, coloristic luxury room in the drab apartment jungle. The edges their photos show traces of the firing process and remind them pleasant, that photography to do with fluids (the "Pool from Above" and "No Pool from Above 2 ", each 50 by 75 inches, edition 3, 1500 dollars).

Alexander Roytburd, currently in a video work at the Biennale Venice issue is represented by a film of the year 1999. His "Exercises for Two Bodies and a Monument "(edition of 5, 1800 dollar) deal with the Balkan trouble spot and take ten minutes. In coarse-grained and brown hue projection is to To see how the two naked men in sneakers before a unidentifiable monument attack. One wears a gorilla mask. You go go ramming each other, and box to appear vulnerable and yet aggressive - and funny. In light of the grave monument, in a very static way culture and history symbolizes falls, first in right, as inappropriate and the simian Behavior of the two men is.

Ann-Sofi Siden, born in 1962 in Stockholm, it has just barely over siebenminuetiges video "Piss Head Lake Down" last year in the flourishing Park Wana shot of the castle (Not limited edition, 1000 dollars). With peace as the documentary Siden, as several workers a life-size bronze statue, the Selbstportraet the artist in the act the pee in between rain-soaked trees and purple rhododendron a lake up. The perpetuation of vulgar and embarrassing Snapshot in Bronze, with closeups of details that triggered the viewer alternately Head shake and laugh. The Argentine Fabio Kacero, 1961, has a two hour film is shot, which consists only of credit by all Lists people who have played a role in his life. This is what it as his own life imaginary film, the actors are indeed honored by name, but reduced on only a few letters (without title, edition 5, 800 dollars).

By the American artist Mark Woods, born 1966, is a big black and white photo of his mattress on a dark background (no title, 1.7 times 2.2 Meters, Edition 3, 6000 dollars). The monumental style of life has lifted off clean and despite his very intimate, because the mattress is a place of fantasies, pain, pleasure, birth and death, is a place of tenderness, like the habit of nightmares like the feeling of security. For centuries, artists struggle with the white canvas and so is Woods's image, a manifest of the blank screen, in self-portrait as a way a mattress. But he is his psychiatrist again until September can tell. (Until 8 September.)

Lisa Zeitz