Artist: Lisa Holzer
Exhibition title: Esst mich!
Venue: Kunstverein München, Munich, Germany
Date: May 25 – August 25, 2019
Photography: All images copyright and courtesy of the artist and © Kunstverein München
Note: Text by Lisa Holzer can be found here
Lisa Holzer explores logics of desire through pictures, text, performative gestures, and subtle alterations to exhibition conventions. In recent works, vulgar yet appetizing photographs of food are rendered formless, enlarged, and abstracted to a painterly, and sometimes anthropomorphic, quality, calling to mind descriptions of aesthetic experience referred to by Theodor Adorno as “tasteful savoring” and “physical devouring,” that brings art into an uncomfortable proximity to “cuisine and pornography.” The resulting images at once mock and celebrate legacies of abstract painting while also teasing cliches and the expectations related to the photographic medium itself. With humor and critical wit, her practice addresses conditions of labor, exposure, visibility, and power confronting artists, artworks, and the art system itself.
Esst mich! features only side dishes and desserts —no main course; no middle. Pictures of cocoa, camembert, pigs- and honey-pig’s-ears (dog treats) for the boys, rice pudding, vanilla and strawberry ice cream, pureed lentils, sugar icing, butterhead lettuce (for the adults?), pureed carrots, avocado sludge; And omelettes, that become door handles, and the inside of chips packages in which colours are reflected like faces, and chrysanthemums, flowers of death devoid of green. And images of the flush of a toilet, photographed with and without flash.
The hanging of Esst mich! is an artwork itself, whereby distinct series of images by the artist are organized in a braid (Hi Munich!). All works are tied together by questions of desire, desire as problem, and their desire to be seen. Quite a few pictures sweat. Some cry (polyurethane drops or tears outside on the glass of the frames, which you cannot remove). A few also puke a little (acrylic paint outside on the glass of the frames). Not least to hinder their only digital reading. Others are dirty of soot and/or ice cream finger prints. They are to be read as protagonists. A long mirrored wall copiously exposes everything, including the viewer, and breaks the powerful symmetry of the main exhibition space and enables some of the pictures to be viewed only at close range. The room self-reflects and reflects on others and other images.
In a rather loving, motherly gesture at the opening, Holzer will mould with her warm hands, small, cute, and more and more soft vanilla and strawberry ice cream penises with balls, the ones from another series of pictures, which are part of this braid as well, and reproduce them for fun. Everyone eating up these cold, sweet ice cream dicks will then become part of the work – their bodies, anyway. Handle a flush. And they will be relieved. Nothing will turn mouldy and become consumed by rats (or worms).
Esst mich! is augmented by a series of events combining music, performances, lectures, and readings.
On 7 June at 7pm, Wine gets depressed at times will feature concerts by Trevor Lee Larson and Battle-ax, as well as a presentation by Westphalie, including a performance by Holzer and the artist and publisher David Jourdan.
On 25 June at 7pm, Every discourse is a discourse of enjoyment will feature a lecture by the philosopher Samo Tomšič related to his recent book “The Labor of Enjoyment”, a performance by the sound and media artist Linda Spjut, and a reading by Holzer of her text Drives drive.
On 23 July at 7pm, Happy end will include “Then I wanted to make a happy end for once”, a talk by the artist, writer, and publisher Ariane Müller, and a reading by the poet Lisa Jeschke from her upcoming book “The Anthology of Poems by Drunk Women”.
In addition, a new publication, the 14th and final edition of our Companion series co-published by Roma Publications, will be released in July.
Lisa Holzer, Esst mich!, 2019, exhibition view, Kunstverein München
Lisa Holzer, Esst mich!, 2019, exhibition view, Kunstverein München
Lisa Holzer, Esst mich!, 2019, exhibition view, Kunstverein München
Lisa Holzer, Esst mich!, 2019, exhibition view, Kunstverein München
Lisa Holzer, Esst mich!, 2019, exhibition view, Kunstverein München
Lisa Holzer, Esst mich!, 2019, exhibition view, Kunstverein München
Lisa Holzer, Esst mich!, 2019, exhibition view, Kunstverein München
Lisa Holzer, Esst mich!, 2019, exhibition view, Kunstverein München
Lisa Holzer, Esst mich!, 2019, exhibition view, Kunstverein München
Lisa Holzer, Esst mich!, 2019, exhibition view, Kunstverein München
Lisa Holzer, Esst mich!, 2019, exhibition view, Kunstverein München
Lisa Holzer, Esst mich!, 2019, exhibition view, Kunstverein München
Lisa Holzer, Esst mich!, 2019, exhibition view, Kunstverein München
Lisa Holzer, Esst mich!, 2019, exhibition view, Kunstverein München
Lisa Holzer, Esst mich!, 2019, exhibition view, Kunstverein München
Lisa Holzer, Esst mich!, 2019, exhibition view, Kunstverein München
Lisa Holzer, Esst mich!, 2019, exhibition view, Kunstverein München
Lisa Holzer, Esst mich!, 2019, exhibition view, Kunstverein München
The mirrored wall, Mirror (2019), got a door handle during a late and rather boring and brief performative gesture on June 7th, as part of the event Wine gets depressed at times, which featured concerts by Trevor Lee Larson and Battle-ax, as well as a presentation by Westphalie, including a performance by Holzer and the artist and publisher David Jourdan. The artist chose glue over drilling or cutting.
Lisa Holzer, Esst mich!, 2019, exhibition view, Kunstverein München
Lisa Holzer, Flush (with and without flash) (2019), Pigment print on cotton paper, Crystal Clear 202/1 polyurethane on glass, hand-painted semigloss enamel on wood, 110.3 x 76.5 cm, Photograph by Sebastian Kissel
Lisa Holzer, Flush (with and without flash) (2019), Pigment print on cotton paper, hand-painted semigloss enamel on wood, 110.3 x 75.5 cm, Photograph by Sebastian Kissel
Lisa Holzer, Flush (with and without flash) (2019), Pigment print on cotton paper, hand-painted semigloss enamel on wood, 110.3 x 79 cm, Photograph by Sebastian Kissel
Lisa Holzer, Flush (with and without flash) (2019), Pigment print on cotton paper, Crystal Clear 202/1 polyurethane on glass, hand-painted semigloss enamel on wood, 110.3 x 82.5 cm, Photograph by Sebastian Kissel
Lisa Holzer, Flush (with and without flash) (2019), Pigment print on cotton paper, hand-painted semigloss enamel on wood, 110.3 x 76 cm, Photograph by Sebastian Kissel
Lisa Holzer, Flush (with and without flash) (2019), Pigment print on cotton paper, hand-painted semigloss enamel on wood, 110.3 x 79 cm, Photograph by Sebastian Kissel
Lisa Holzer, Flush (with and without flash) (2019), Pigment print on cotton paper, Crystal Clear 202/1 polyurethane on glass, hand-painted semigloss enamel on wood, 110.3 x 79 cm, Photograph by Sebastian Kissel
Lisa Holzer, Flush (with and without flash) (2019), Pigment print on cotton paper, hand-painted semigloss enamel on wood, 110.3 x 74.5 cm, Photograph by Sebastian Kissel
Lisa Holzer, Flush (with and without flash) (2019), Pigment print on cotton paper, hand-painted semigloss enamel on wood, 110.3 x 82.5 cm, Photograph by Sebastian Kissel
Lisa Holzer, Flush (with and without flash) (2019), Pigment print on cotton paper, Crystal Clear 202/1 polyurethane on glass, hand-painted semigloss enamel on wood, 110.3 x 75.5 cm, Photograph by Sebastian Kissel
Lisa Holzer, Guts (2019), Pigment print on cotton paper, hand-painted semigloss enamel on wood, 110.3 x 79 cm, Photograph by Sebastian Kissel
Lisa Holzer, Guts (2019), Pigment print on cotton paper, hand-painted semigloss enamel on wood, 110.3 x 76.5 cm, Photograph by Sebastian Kissel
Lisa Holzer, Guts (2019), Pigment print on cotton paper, soot on glass, hand-painted semigloss enamel on wood, 110.3 x 76 cm, Photograph by Sebastian Kissel
Lisa Holzer, Guts (2019), Pigment print on cotton paper, hand-painted semigloss enamel on wood, 110.3 x 74.5 cm, Photograph by Sebastian Kissel