After, the friends sit there for hours. Wait for a miracle. Stare into their bugged computers, stare at happy people pointing fingers at one another, nudging one another, giggling or merely passing by, disinterestedly. They feel. Nothing. The shock creates a cold roar in their bodies – unable to analyse just what went wrong with their coup, planned so long in advance, with which they wanted to wake up society. They had been ready for anything. For outrage, an uprising, an outcry, but not for indifference.
Sibylle Berg, GRM, Cologne 2019, p. 553.
In Sibylle Berg’s dystopia, GRM, a group of neglected, revolutionary teenagers carry out a hack to bring home to society just how scandalously individuals are being spied on, used and made subject to an inhuman, neoliberal system. And then, nothing happens. The novel doesn’t ask whether the unhealthy, climate-damaging, racist and sexist system of Great Britain (which has been slightly fictionalised and set in the future) is wrong; it asks who cares. In his performative exhibition entitled Exclusiv, Florian Meisenberg uses a common household robot that vacuums and mops floors – all the while sending video and audio material from our most intimate areas via poorly secured networks, a potential source of risk. Because who cares what our homes look like! Exactly.
With Exclusiv, Meisenberg once again picks up his exploration of painting and digital art at Provinz, re-examining the formal and contextual conditions that define artistic editions. Filled with indian ink, said robot vacuum cleaner paints gestural traces on the prepared canvas. The course has been set up on a square base made out of crates of mineral water, placed in the middle of the gallery; the water is from Bochum’s Herzog spring.
The brand‘s name, Exclusiv, links to the conventional, potentially random limitation of series of works of art. Several objects (a vase and similar objects) block the robot’s path and thus force it to make specific movements, creating curves, lines, changing the thickness of the strokes. The artistic framework is clearly a corset for the machine, which, despite its tremendous computing power, is simple. After the obstacles are removed, the canvas reveals blank spaces. As a result there are paintings on canvas, complex compositions made of positive and negative forms, which are available for purchase as a series of unique works – during the opening / performance, the works will be sold at a subscription price (50%).
Whether Meisenberg has a critical attitude towards this smart home device, and others like it, remains unanswered; in this context, it is worth resisting the impulse to confuse the artist with his work. Andy Warhol did not become a pioneer due to his critical or affirmative attitude towards modern advertisements but rather through his artistic decision to employ them as an art form. Even though Sigmar Polke’s political perspective is much more „sceptical“, he comes to results that are very similar to those of his American colleague, with his depictions of Federal German, escapist kitsch. It is not how something is done but whether it is done that matters. 60 years later, works from the same period that expressed social relevance far less ambiguously (such as the so-called critical realists) have become more of a footnote to art history. Art takes effect not by proclaiming its content but instead by giving it away in passing. To everyone. Exclusively
Translated from German by Emma Jane Stone
kindly supported by Herzog Mineralbrunnen, Bochum
Florian Meisenberg was born in Berlin, Germany in 1980. He now lives and works in New York, US. Meisenberg studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in the class of Peter Doig (2004-2010) and the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture (2009).
Exhibitions
His work has been featured in exhibitions at SCHIRN KUNSTHALLE (Frankfurt), Kunstpalais Erlangen, Kölnischer Kunstverein (Cologne), Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Kasseler Kunstverein (Kassel), Ludwig Forum (Aachen), Wilhelm-Hack-Museum, (Ludwigshafen), KW Institute of Contemporary Art (Berlin), Museum Kunsten (Aalborg), Henie Onstad Kunstsenter (Oslo), ICA Institute of Contemporary Art (Philadelphia), Queens Museum of Art (New York), Simone Subal Gallery (New York), Francois Ghebaly Gallery (Los Angeles) and Mendes Wood (Sao Paulo).
Collections
Florian Meisenberg’s work is part of public collections worldwide. These include Boros Collection (Berlin), Collection Cesar Reyes (San Juan), Collection Ignacio Lopez (San Juan), Hammer Museum (Los Angeles), Julia Stoschek Collection (Düsseldorf), Kiasma Museum (Helsinki), Kornelimuenster (Aachen), Kunsthalle Recklinghausen, Kunstmuseum Bochum, Kunstsammlung NRW (Düsseldorf), Philara Collection (Düsseldorf), Sammlung Albert Kriemler (Zürich), Sammlung Becker (Cologne), Sammlung Dietz (Stuttgart), Sammlung Harald Spengler (Munich), Sammlung Köstlin (Berlin), Sammlung Osram (Munich), Sammlung Stadtsparkasse Düsseldorf im Museum Kunstpalast (Düsseldorf), Slg. Wilhelm Otto Nachf. (Cologne), The Pizzuti Collection (Columbus), Vanhaerents Art Collection (Brussels),
Wilhelm-Hack-Museum (Ludwigshafen) and the Zabludowicz Collection (London).
Florian Meisenberg‘s painting performance includes the following components:
a pedestal made of 50 mineral water crates of the brand „Exclusiv“ of the Bochum Herzog Quelle, a wooden board (280 x 300 cm), stacking objects made of plastic, a lattice basket made of metal, an umbrella stand made of plastic, canvases in the dimensions of the pedestal, stretcher frames in various sizes, inks in the colors Persian red, burnt umber, blue-violet, Mauritius blue, Cheops green, a mop-vacuuming robot of the brand Xiaomi Mi.
Florian Meisenberg first places the objects on the stage, which was built from mineral water crates and wooden board covered with canvas. They serve as obstacles for the mopping robot. The setting is completed by a person who remains in a predetermined posture. After the mopping robot has been filled with ink and set in motion, it moves along the pedestal, leaving behind a large-format drawing. In a further step, Florian Meisenberg makes a selection of individual motifs from the overall picture, cuts them out of the canvas and stretches them onto the stretcher frames prepared in different sizes. Their dimensions correspond to the grid of the water crates. The whole process is repeated (several times). In this way, a series of abstract unique paintings are created, which vary in motif, size and color. The pedestal with remnants of canvas as well as the stacked objects remain in the room as sculptures.
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