Nothing else

Ottmar Hörl
(12 Pages, 21 x 29,5 cm)
Text: D, E, F
ISBN: 978-3-933487-46-9
6,00 EUR

Ottmar Hörl's nothing else operates somewhere between Andy Warhol's "I think people should think less anyway. I'm not trying to educate people to see things or feel things in my paintings" and Joseph Beuys's "Anyone who does not want to think is disqualified."

I am trying to develop a level that makes it possible for lots of people to approach art. So that a relationship to the objects or to the idea seen is developed communicatively. No installation simply stands there on the street emptied of meaning. Rather, there are always givens of the subject matter that I find interesting and that establish the contact to people, since one aspect of the subject matter is connected to something with which people are familiar in one way or another.

For example, 800 frogs sat “in their natural environment” in the Jugendstil fountain at the Mathildenhöhe in Darmstadt. Were they all waiting for the princess? Isn’t La vache qui rit a French cheese? How could the Dürer drawing of a hare remain famous for five hundred years? Would anyone have thought that the “god” named Wagner was a dog lover? And would anyone have thought that this very Wagner published not only operas but also a book in 1880 arguing against experiments on animals? Is it true that there are no more owls in Athens today and that “once upon a time” there were white ravens? What is a hobby horse doing in a city’s coat of arms, and can you imagine that wild boars once occupied an entire section of a city? Have the residents of Rottweiler ever encountered 600 Rottweilers in a park at one time? Do penguins represent the “ideal society”? Is the teddy bear not a bridge to one’s own childhood? Are castle rats capable of evolution? And who would kill a hen that lays golden eggs?

As an artist I grapple with various forms of language in public spaces. This results in a kind of “food-stuff” for design that sees its everyday utility as communicative expansion.

I do not believe that very eventful consequences result from the uniqueness of an encounter. Only the principle of repetition makes it possible to formulate essential questions.