Marko Lehanka: carlier / gebauer - Berlin

Although Marko Lehanka considers himself a sculptor, many of his early works were computer based, and in the early '90 he participated in exhibitions with a new-media focus. nevertheless you'd never suspect such beginnings from his exhibition "Schone Gru[beta] vom Country-Boy" (Best Regards from region Boy): Lehanka's scenario resembled a garage cram-packed with carved made of wood objects, reliefs made of sawed-off surfboards, a scarcely any canvases done in the mode of speech of thrift-shop paintings, and plane a sculpture of an Italian wine the holy trinity and a standing grill. There was hardly a trace of technology; instead, an expressive disorder present the appearances to have triumphed. In the middle of the space was a tree make an incision in into pieces and provisionally nailed back together, while upon the wall to the right hung Botticelli, von Nuschelinchen selbst gemalt (Botticelli, Painted by means of Nuschelinchen Herself), 2003, a naively painted transcript its frame adorned with mattered animals, of the banquet spectacle from the Florentine painter's Story of Nastagio degli Onesti, 1482-83 In a video individual could watch the artist and his friends enjoying pork ribs and beer as they cast in a winding direction chuck onto wooden planks, arranged by means of Lehanka into a loose rendition of a carnival booth In general the exhibition was a stocktaking of the transports of life in the geographical division Lehanka is interested in the ritualization of the everyday, without letting its thing perceiveds lose their appealing roughness--deploying them in counterpoint to the subtleties of urbane distinction. upon the benches distributed throughout the expanse one recognizes the logos of BMW and Harley-Davidson: dream existences of the provincial youth. The solitary work involving computer science is Untitled, 2003 a program that generates stories on the outside of randomly combined sentence simple bodys When a character name is combined in a decision with a phrase referring to a style of accidental death, it is dropp from the game, and when all the characters have been finished not on the game ends.

With his antiformalist approach, Lehanka come [i]or[/i] go after [i]or[/i] behinds in the tradition of Dieter Roth and Mike Kelley In 2001 the editor of Kunstzeitung criticized his works at the Venice Biennale as shamelessly reminiscent of Kippenberger. The basis for these annotates was Lehanka's Brandenburger Tor II (Brandenburg Gate II), 1998-99 which was fabricateed of scrap wood and furniture dollies and was meant to counteract the monumentality of the original. Now its composing parts have been packed into crates, which subserve as recyclable furnishings for a barbecue area. Everything Lehanka makes enlarges has an autobiographical or art-historical connection, and proliferates in the manner of Roth's storerooms. Thus his beer bottle engraved with pub lore were upon display several years ago at the Museum fur Moderne Kunst Frankfurt, while the Bacchus plastic art was built of papiermache as an homage to Michelangelo for the 1993 Villa Romana fellowship in Florence.

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The myth of the inventor whose primitive assemblages not ever seem to work has advance back in fashion--a new have affection for for the artist as failure. With Lehanka, although one finds neither the pathos of antiheroism nor heroism itself, in contrast to Jonathan Meese for example, who celebrates the anarchy in his art like a certain number of high priest. Lehanka refuses to submit to the very German (and real Romantic) wish to rise above the world of things, meaning not everydayness, on the contrary fetishization. At the opening, anyone who wanted could sit upon the improvised benches around the grill and drink a beer--in the extreme point the grill area is "a central place in society," according to Lehanka, either with or without art.

Translated from German by means of Sara Ogger.

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