In Focus: Wolf Kahlen • Sa sat 10.2.

• 20 h • 8 pmIn Focus curated by Gallery KMZA

Wolf Kahlen


Einer der ersten Videokunstponiere Deutschlands im Portrait

A closer look into the work of one of the earliest video art pioneers

Wolf Kahlen (left) in talk with Longest F. Stein of gallery KMZA during Directors Lounge 2006

In Wolf Kahlen´s NetWorks images or sounds, words of the classical poets in world languages or the European anthem dissolve by the clicking interactivity of the user. And return cyclecally in a second part of the piece, pixel by pixel, the same way they disappeared.
Life and death of images and sound compositions: The triptych of the reknowned piece (of the year 2000) called SELBST-LOS/Self-less (shown to the left), or WOLKEN-LOS and the recent GEDANKEN-LOS, and others like EUROPA ON THE FLY or VERZEIHUNG HERR VON GOETHE, SORRY MISTER JOYCE ...
In analogy then the single found and unchanged stones and ‘young rocks’ (a title of an 1969 video sculpture of Kahlen using a floating stone) , no more than atomic or pixeled parts of their environment, but joined together to groups of two or three, they may be looking like letters or archaic sculptures. May take over associations of any kind, though they are born out of chance and play, like the NetWorks.
Which are as site specific as the stone works, since they happen only at the site of the user at instant and never repeat, though they can be printed out, signed and numbered, as globally distributed parts of a piece, which knowbody owns, but many thousands so far have only details of.
The momentary associations, their potential of temporaily changes, this is the connection between the stones and the pixels.Peter P. Kajzar

Ich weiss nicht, wie man alle anspricht. Ich persönlich kann nur jemanden ansprechen.
I d not know how to address any-body. I can communicate with some-body only.
Es gibt keine Wirklichkeit. Es gibt nur Wirklichkeiten.
There is no one reality. I only know realities.
Nichts ist direkt erfahrbar, alles ist ver-mitte-lt, also objektiv falsch, persönlich wohl richtig.
No perception is pure of ..., anyone is media-ted, objectively wrong, personnaly maybe right.
Medien vermitteln.
Media mediate.
Im besten Falle zwischen der Situation und mir.
If I am lucky between matter and me.
Zwischen Materie und Immaterie.
Between material and the immaterial.
Ohne geistige Energien materialisiert sich garnichts.
Without spirit-ual energies no-thing matters.

(Wolf Kahlen 1980)

• Ich kann sagen was ich will 5 min, 1975

• Selbstversuch II (Körperrasur) 1 min 45s,

• Trespassing 5 min,

• Selbstversuch IV (Bräunung) 5 min 45s

• I can’t get hold of her 5 min, 1975

• Lindentunnel 7 min 36, 1991

• Some proofs/Some more proofs of water refraining from shaping

12 min 43s, 1991/2002

• Art Flood 4 min 22s

• Schnelles grau 6 min 49s, 1990

• Wolken die Berge Versetzen 36 min 36, 1990/1999

more at placeboKatz

Wolf Kahlen Museum