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4/5/2009

Lawrence Weiner

MMK - Museum fur Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt

"The limits of my language are the limits of my world."
(Wittgenstein: Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 1921, 5.6)

In the current exhibition of the Double series, four lines of text respectively have been positioned on two walls facing each other, whereby the one text is in German and the other in English, both created by Lawrence Weiner. TOWARDS A REASONABLE END first showcased in Kabinett für aktuelle Kunst in Bremerhaven in 1975.

In the course of his career, Lawrence Weiner has drawn on a broad variety of media in his art, ranging from performances, video clips, book and music productions to theoretical texts.

His most famous artworks are his "sculptures" – radically reduced to space and typography, their artistic vehicle is language. Most of these sculptures are composed of a short text in English (Lawrence Weiner's mother tongue) and the corresponding translation in the language of the exhibition venue. Referred to by the artist as language sculptures, they are embedded in the respective surrounding architecture.
The radical concept of these extraordinary sculptures is based on a stringent system of rules, which he published in 1969. What was unsettling about Lawrence Weiner's approach was that he believed a work of art could be formed by words alone.

Furthermore, the above-mentioned set of rules conveys his strictly conceptual understanding of art which was thus in harmony with the sober artistic appearance of the texts.

What furthermore underlies Lawrence Weiner's textual works is his endeavour to create new and unique images in art. Lawrence Weiner is not so much interested in the medium of wall painting than he is in broadening the art discourse by the aspect of dematerialising the artwork linguistically through his language sculptures.

Lawrence Weiner's work TOWARDS A REASONABLE END does not seek to tell a story. There is no narrative structure to his lines, they are in verse but they are not poetry. He deliberately leaves the linguistic formulations open to interpretation, even if we are pushed in a certain direction as using the word "towards" seems to suggest. In this regard, TOWARDS A REASONABLE END does indicate a certain thrust, for, naturally, all things move to a particular end; however, the question is: What is reasonable about this? What final decision, what solution to a problem can be called reasonable? The spatial juxtaposition of the bilingual lines of text confronts us with the fact that the subject matter is something we simply cannot avoid. Regardless of whether life's difficulties – in the form of chasms and gaps that need to be bridged – are overcome, we are faced with the same final fate, which is death. In other words, when contemplating the wall text, everything thus strives towards a particular end – like a sentence that ends with a full stop.

Hence the tenor of Lawrence Weiner's work is almost that of the Baroque notion of vanitas, “Remember that you are mortal”. The end that awaits us seems to be specified particularly in the English version of TOWARDS A REASONABLE END, where the added attribute “reasonable” intimates that the end will at least be one to which we can reconcile ourselves.

Image: Lawrence Weiner at the Kabinett für aktuelle Kunst, Bremerhaven TOWARDS A REASONABLE END, 1975 (Photo: Jürgen Wesseler)

Double – 40 years of Kabinett für Aktuelle Kunst, Bremerhaven

an exhibition series presented by the MMK

in collaboration with Gregor Schneider and Moritz Wesseler
March 3 until autumn 2010

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