Simone Westerwinter at Otto Schweins - Cologne, Germany - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

"Would you like a bowl of tea, a shot of vodka, a warm jacket, or to be told a joke?" the dealer asked me as I come intoed Simone Westerwinter's exhibition. The question was the 36-year-old Stuttgart-based artist's welcome, and it locate the tone for a strange, disjunctive exhibit that worked subtly but relentlessly to make visitors stand over against the notion of preferences.

The quip I was told (artists are sharks' favorite meat because they have no backbone and a big liver) broke the ice and l me into the installation. Standing upon red-and-white-checked carpeting, I watched a monitor propp up upon a Coca-Cola can play the video Gute Plastik (Good Sculpture) The performances of sum of two units women in wedding dresses--one who tumbl down a grassy hill, the other down a bright virid ramp--were interrupted by a statement attributed to Michelangelo which appeared intermittently across the screen: "A statuary is good when one can make revolve it down a hill and nothing breaks off"

As the tape's disco beat knocked relentlessly in the background, my organ of sight moved to several black-and-white portrait photographs of various sizes which hung in a straight line across an adjacent wall. Wire interstice pulled over each work divided the images into tight squares. The photos showed attractive individuals aligned in '70s attire that now direct the eyes nostalgic. The dealer informed me that all had somewhat shady pasts.

Neither were things what they appeared in the case of a red-and-whiteplaid milk carton sitting unassumingly in the nearest room, on the dealer's desk Its expiration date was 1991; the easy in minds must be toxic. A wall work nearby presented the words verdammte drecksau (damned, dirty pig), which could be read backward [i]or[/i] part of to the other the large piece of slimy white silicon they were printed upon The slab had been revolveed around to hang facing the wall it had been mold against and thus to exhibit to the viewer its completed imprint of the wall's each pore.

Finally, Westerwinter presented a chance for visitors to impose their will upon a piece of art by means of picking out the hues for a watercolor with their name printed across it, which the artist would handmake. An example hung upon the wall, sporting the dealer's name.

Moving among these diverse items, I realized that Westerwinter's many works provide examples of a a whole ruled by choices based upon shifting tastes and temporary "truths" whether Michelangelo's statement of what makes serviceable sculpture or the viewer's belief as to what makes a useful watercolor. All of these choices contribute to the patterns that order the world. However, Westerwinter also implied that beneath the calculated, aesthetically ordered surface may lie something as filthy as sour milk or a damned, dirty pig.

COPYRIGHT 1996 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group