Lisa Holzer at Lira – Art Viewer

Artist: Lisa Holzer

Exhibition title: Men what a humble word

Venue: Lira, Rome, Italy

Date: January 23 – March 5, 2016

Photography: images copyright and courtesy the artist and Lira, Rome

At the beginning of 2015 I was reading Michel Houellebecq’s Submission and looking through an old Jean Fautrier catalogue when Isis attacked Paris for the first time. I started to work on a show, later called Keep All Your Friends, using only titles of Jean Fautrier works, that I found in this catalogue. They seemed to perfectly connect my previous occupation with the Young-Girl to how I was feeling.

Men what a humble word follows previous works that were inspired by the Young-Girl* described by Tiqqun. Although their notion of the Young-Girl as a figure of capitalism includes men as well. Men are helpless. At least that’s often what I feel. And I’m helpless to their helplessness. The first works concerning men were on view in Keep All Your Friends in London last May. The Man Who Is Unhappy and Head of a Partisan. Here in Rome I will show pictures from five new groups of men: The Man Who Is Blue Or Blonde And Works, The Man Who Is Bold, Dogface, The Dissidents, and The Dreamer.

I pick certain types of men, and translate them into pictures and texts. Each group is represented by different numbers of similar pictures bearing the same name, and is almost always accompanied by a text in the form of a short informal note, that primarily addresses me, and could be sung. We’ll see.

All works are pigment prints on cotton paper, and all framed in bespoke, white, varnished frames. As in previous works the reflective glass of the frames is treated as well, carefully dotted by hand with Crystal Clear 202/1 polyurethane (my hand against, my hand against glass). Body heat leaks, individually, how unique, as sexy, scentless, tactile drops of sweat which again you will not be able to remove. Delicately applied acrylic paint on the glass of the frames serves as puke in some of the works. Otherwise shades of dead wan yellow are of formal interest, the colour of peeled bananas, spaghetti, Michel Houellebecq’s hair, Go Blonder shampoo or creamy camembert, as well as hues of baby blues and pinks. And a surprisingly bright Egon Schiele or Gaylen Gerber orange should be interesting too.

We’ll have a campfire in the courtyard, some marshmallows and sticks. So please join us for this opening!