Reinhard Mucha.

ANTHONY D'OFFAY 

The seven individual pieces in this show were to be understood, for the duratio of the exhibition, to form a single large work. The installation took the gallery as yet an other site of activity for the artist, drawing it into the flux of Reinhard Mucha's reiterative, cannibalistic, and reflexive labor. Five of the works, four door pieces and one cloth-covered assemblage mounted on an old mattress base, carried the six-letter names of German railway stations. These--Aachen, Ehrang, Trevsa, Biblis, and Weimar (all 1993)--had been selected from amongst the 242 names first documented in Wartesaal, 1979-82. The other tw works in the show--untitled reframings and reprises of material from and documentation of earlier installations in Frankfurt and Toronto--also involved looking back over old ground. Though characteristically an art of documentation and retrieval, Mucha's work is not maudlin. Its contemplation of the past is retrospective, not regressive. It is concerned with themes and continuing narratives, not with things that are finished, gone, over.

Turned 90 degrees, from portrait to landscape, his doors which once allowed ingress/egress to the individual became panoramas to be viewed. Worn-out and no longer functionally adequate, these abandoned fittings were taken up as points of access into the flow of history. One of the doors here, Aachen, 1993, had been fitted with an electronic security lock. All that remained as evidence of this were two short wires sticking out of an otherwise empty slot in what was now the work's top edge. Described by Mucha as "feelers" or "antennae," they confirmed that some thing continues to live inside it.

There was no catalogue to the show, just a handout with detailed descriptions o each work. It was, as Mucha's work is, a documentation of what is already there to be seen. Picking over the detritus discovered at sites of production, musing endlessly on the material infrastructure that has supported and sustained all such sites, most notably the heavy industries of steel production and of rail transport, Mucha's boxes were demonstrations of their mate rial. There was quirky fictionalizing--Aachen's "antennae"--set alongside an undiminished schoolboy curiosity about things. The show's title, "Weight on Drivers" was taken from a specification sheet for an old steam locomotive, but Mucha offered no tendentious analysis.

Boxed up in combination with his trademark mix of aluminum strips and gray felt panels, suggestive as much of an obsessional need to order and construct as of the idea of function, the glazed fronts of these post-Beuysian doors/vitrines inevitably reflected the spectator into their interiors. Viewer co-optation is pretty much a condition of art. Ubiquitous, commonplace, the use of glass' reflective properties would scarcely rate a mention, but for Mucha's insistence on the importance not only of the glass itself, but of what lies behind it. The cabinet fronts were most of ten drawn on with lines of gray or red industrial paint, emphasizing the transformation and reactivation of the door's surface into another kind of permeable barrier. In being altered and set in place on th wall, they were activated as a way into what they have witnessed and what, consequently, had accrued to them. More accurately, perhaps, one should think not of a history but of a plurality of histories. How the trajectory of the individual connects with the larger disposition of events and phenomena in the world remains of overriding significance. In musing upon material encountered b chance, happen stance gets worked up into something that seems like coincidence Behavior takes on a pattern. Along with the semblance of meaning, loom the specters of purposiveness, intention, and direction.

ERICSSON continued from page 16

Stockholm, the Malmo Konsthall, and several other art museums and halls throughout the country. In the '60s, under the dynamic leadership of Pontus Hulten (later the first director of the Centre Pompidou in Paris), the Moderna Museet opened its doors to all the new tendencies in art: neo-Dada, Pop, Nouvea Realisme, Fluxus, Minimalism, Happenings, etc. During the '70s, when the Swedis art scene became much more politicized (but also more isolated), the Kulturhuse became a kind of leftist alternative to both the Moderna Museet (which had begu to lose some of its edge after Hulten's departure) and the Kungliga Konstakademien, the royal academy (which never had any edge to lose). There wer few private galleries and collectors, and as a result, the Swedish art scene wa almost completely dominated by the institutions.

This situation reversed itself in the '80s. The Moderna Museet ceased to be a forum for contemporary art; it produced only one major contemporary show all that decade, "Implosion: A Postmodern Perspective," 1987, curated by Lars Nittve. This exception aside, the museum devoted its exhibition schedule to classic Modernists like Wassily Kandinsky, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and Marc Chagall. And the Kulturhuset also lost its touch (partly due to the left's ideological crisis), creating a vacuum that was filled by new commercial galleries and new private and corporate collectors. Supported by the economic boom, these forces took the initiative from the sagging public institutions. Fredrik Roos, a millionaire collector of contemporary art, even started his own private museum, the Rooseum. For the first time in recent memory, the responsibility for new, advanced, and experimental art lay in private hands.

This development actually produced some good art. But in the general frenzy, it symbolic meaning--its pre diction of the Swedish Model's demise--was almost drowned out by the sound of popping champagne corks. David Bowie's line "The vacuum created the arrival of freedom" seemed to fit the moment perfectly.

The current crisis--economic, ideological, psycho logical--contains much bewilderment, fear, and even anger. People feel disoriented, and scapegoats are easy to find. In recent years Sweden has accepted a large number of immigrants and refugees (many from Bosnia and other parts of ex-Yugoslavia). Xenophobia an racism have be gun to poison the body politic, with refugee camps attacked and mosques burned down. Nationalism and provincialism are in the air. All of which makes it less surprising that, to judge from recent polls, a majority of Swedes are opposed to membership in the European Community.

In an art world characterized by weak institutions without vision, and by a cautious but slowly recovering market, conservative groups see their chance to get rid of "alien" (post-Modern, deconstructive, antiesthetic) art and theory. As might be expected in a recession, we see a lot of mediocre traditional painting both in the galleries and in the museums. The Rooseum, that private monument to the '80s, almost had to close, but was saved by money from the stat and from the city of Malmo--at a price. Appearing currently at this "center for contemporary art" is a show of drawings (and facsimiles of drawings) by Leonardo.

The present state of the Moderna Museet is sad indeed: "We no longer take the Moderna Museet into account," Jean-Christophe Ammann, director of the Museum fu Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt am Main, recently told a Swedish curator. Once important internationally as a scene of contemporary art, it has now become a kind of mausoleum dedicated to "classical" Modernism. Yet anew building for the museum, designed by the Spanish architect Rafael Moneo, has been commissioned, at a cost of approximately $50 million.

The prospects are not entirely bleak. The European Council recently named Stockholm "Cultural Capital of Europe" for 1998. It is an obvious propaganda stunt, but in order not to lose face completely, the politicians will have to "bless" the cultural world with considerable amounts of money. (What they will fund, of course, remains to be seen.) Perhaps most promising, a younger generation of artists, who have realized that they can count on neither the institutions (which won't let them in) nor the galleries (which tend to play it safe, for lack of money), have begun to take things into their own hands. Recently, 15 of them organized a show called "Spelets regler" (Rules of the game), which sited works in widely scattered locations around Stockholm--a pool hall, a ministry, a bus, a hotel, a department store. In Malmo, 11 young artist "invaded" a supermarket with their artistic "products." One participant, Elin Wikstrom, startled customers by bringing her bed to the store and occupying it for the duration of the show. Other fresh and challenging exhibitions have been mounted in alternative spaces and in new, noncommercial galleries such as Ynglingagatan 1 (which also shows young American artists), located in cheap, "off-off" areas. Projects like these reveal this generation's determination to investigate and articulate the present social and cultural metamorphosis. With considerable audacity, they have begun to sketch the outline of a period that looks as if it could become as politically charged as the late '60s.

Lars O. Ericsson is the Swedish correspondent for Artforum and an art critic fo Dagens Nyheter. He is currently associate professor of philosophy at the University of Stockholm.

RIMANELLI/LIEBERMAN continued from page 66

don't care. They're not impressed.

DR: On a different note, is fat the last taboo?

JW: When Divine died, fat was kind of over for me too. I did it a lot but even Rich Lake isn't heavy anymore. I don't care what Ricki weighs she'd have the part, but I did tell her to lose weight because of what happened with Divine.

DR: So what would be taboo, then?

JW: Well, I don't think something has to be taboo to be good. That's trying too hard. There are very few taboos. White and black still are, even though people don't have the nerve to say so.

DR: Fat for example is still a taboo.

JW: Gaultier has a fat model, there are fat models on run-ways now. It's knocke barriers down. What's the rock group one of the Beach Boys' daughters is in?

RL: Do you think we're experiencing rampant freedom now?

JW: No, certainly not with AIDS, but there aren't many taboos left of the old school of my generation's parents, which is, like, the last generation that had influence on all of us; the generation before that is too old, dead, you know. There aren't many taboos left of the obvious sort; they've taken new mutations. They're harder to identify but they're certainly still there--that's why I like these new kids who come up with these new looks. I think it looks great. I always react for a minute against art that I love, and the same goes for all th young kids. I'll tell you one thing that I can't stand is body piercing. I see so much of it right now; it's really popular. There's some doctor that's going to make a fortune removing all these tattoos in twenty years because believe me tattoos look bad when you're 50. Tattoos on kids today is another new thing tha I hate and that I think looks hideous. I don't get it but I still keep thinking about it. It's become really big now, and it is offensive to your parents.

DR: It's like wanting to be lower class, having a walk on the wild side.

JW: Pirate's earrings and piercing are one thing, but I've also seen tongues, noses. I saw a lot of women topless with pierced tits at the Gay Pride Parade. don't get it.

DR: John Waters is an old fogey?

JW: Yeah, I'll be the first to admit it.

RL: So we can assume you have no tattoos.

JW: No, I would never get a tattoo. I was never tempted to for one minute; they look horrible when you're 50 years old.

RL: And you were thinking that far ahead?

JW: Well, I knew that they really look bad when you're old.

RL: They droop.

JW: They all do droop, believe me, especially all these macho ones. Everybody's getting them, and it makes you look a hundred years older than you are.

RL: OK, we want to ask the art question.

DR: Since this is an art magazine.

RL: Do you buy any art?

JW: Yeah, I do.

RL: Can you share with us some of your collection?

JW: I hate to name-drop.

DR: Do you have any enthusiasms in art?

JW: I'll tell you who I own. I have a Cy Twombly piece. My cleaning lady told m I should have a sign saying that it cost money, because otherwise someone might throw it out. I've got Warhol stuff from his really old days. I have a Jackie Kennedy thing I got in 1963 in Baltimore for $80 Mike Kelley, Roy Lichtenstein, Brice Marden, Walter and Margaret Keane.

RL: Is there stuff you'd like to buy if it were in the right price range?

JW: If I was a multibillionaire, I'd buy a Robert Ryman.

DR: Oh really, why do you like Ryman?

JW: Oh, I just think his work is so beautiful. I would also like to buy Twombly's A Letter of Resignation, but it's not for sale.

DR: Let's hope your movies keep getting bigger and bigger.

JW: Yeah. I like Fischli/Weiss and Richard Turtle a lot.

DR: A lot of art that interests you, based on the things you named, must be a kind of diversion from the movies you make. It's very formal, beautiful stuff.

RL: I don't think it's a secret that you're quite an esthete.

JW: Well, to appreciate bad taste you have to respect it, but you also have to have some sort of good taste to like bad taste.

RL: Is there any bad bad taste?

JW: Oh, yeah, most of it is I think. I've said this before, but yuppies with pink flamingos on their from lawns really of fend me. Purposely imitating what you think is more lower class than you and then laughing about it is extremely offensive to me.

RL: Well, I'm glad you went on record saying that. If anything, it's a public service.

JW: It's bad taste if you really don't have some sort of respect for what you'r satirizing or collecting. The thing about my movies is that while I may not lik everything I make fun of, I am fascinated and intrigued by what I use. I don't make movies about things I really hate, like sports.

DR: John Waters' next project--a baseball movie.

RL: What was it like modeling for Comme des Garcons?

JW: Oh, God, it was fun. I felt like Mahogany meets Don Knotts. Comme des Garcons called me and said, like, Do you want to do this. I said, Yes, I love the stuff. I said, I wear the stuff. They said, We know, we have a file. It's amazing, they're like fashion spies. So I was honored. I said, Just don't give me the most radical clothes. When I saw the clothes, I wanted to kill myself. I thought, I'm going to be on the cover of Spy magazine in bell-bottoms that came

to here. But I said to myself,"Just shut up and do it; they're paying you.

DR: What about the movie you're actually working on? What do you think of the status of the serial-killer genre and what kind of contribution do you hope to make with the film?

JW: I don't think there's been a comedy yet about serial killers. The genre has been heavily seen on TV. Lately every time there's a crime--even before the crime's finished--they've sold it to TV and started shooting, so it's certainly a satire of that genre. But as far as I know, there's never been a comedy about a serial killer like ours, where we ask you, the audience, to root for her basically to kill more.

DR: Do you think they asked you to maybe root a little bit for Henry the serial killer in that movie?

JW: Yeah, and I love that movie very much. But it was such a different kind of movie than ours. It was so realistic and truly scary and horrifying. My film is very different. It's a comedy. Did they ask you to root for him? I certainly didn't root for him. His victims didn't deserve it. In my movie, as the killer' son says, they sort of deserved it. He says, They were assholes, but they didn' deserve to die. That's the politics of this film, I guess.

RL: Actually we have a few "pitta" questions. We know you tried to get Mother Teresa in one of your films. Can you tell us about that?

JW: Well, I didn't really try. It was that I wanted to like her, but she should keep her nose out of other people's private lives like a good little religious person's supposed to do, rather than nosing around, I have no interest in havin her in any film. I hate Mother Teresa. I hate her politics.

RL: What are some of the things you like to show to your audiences?

JW: What I like to show is certainly the humor in all situations--when everything is just so terrible. Gallows humor--this movie really has a lot of it. I don't think anybody's seen Kathleen Turner have this much fun in a role i quite some time. I'm incredibly happy with the film. I think she's very very funny and at the same time very very evil. I always like the villains best in movies--always, since I was growing up. So I make the villain the star and the cliche good guy generally ends up the villain. I want audiences to laugh at everything they fear.

DR: Is that what makes you want to make films, fear?

JW: In some ways fears are the most interesting things of all. All psychiatrist should ask you about them first.

RL: Wow, that's a great idea.

JW: Sure, what I'm most afraid of I put in my movies. That's what keeps everyon from going crazy--they know that everybody else is dealing with the same fears all day. People hide their fears but if they kind of discover and get used to them--if they realize you have to live with them for the rest of your life, tha they're not going to change--then that's when all the tension goes away. That's when you can laugh. Laughter's much better than sex. It's better than retribution. It's the only thing that really works.

McCORMICK continued from page 69

20th-century agent of social change and exchange, even being credited with the collapse of the Iron Curtain--but of spiritual transmigration, of the simultaneous loss and reinvention of self that takes place in the dance of life Patkin's ballroom is the Garden regained, the utopian Paradise on Earth, an alternative dimension. Dissolving physical bounds, dance is the metashamanic path of excess by which we may attain the ephemeral grace of being literally beside ourselves.

Where Each Is Both, then, is a Nataraja, or dancing Siva, and has dancing alter egos. Like Patkin, Carmen Miranda and Josephine Baker are Brahmanic expatriates lone troubadours divested of the physical parameters of their respective cultural identities, fluidly traversing the difficult topography of societal time and place. Like Siva, they are both destroyer and creator, end and beginning, inhabitants of the distant limits of "acceptable" behavior, outsider who are somehow central. Like Siva, they combine opposites; like Siva, they are dancers.

Conjunctions like these are the hooks on which Patkin hangs his hybrids, his prophetic absurdities, his plays among the poetics of paradox and of the lowbro pun. His apt title for his strategy of multiple iconographies, Where Each Is Both, is itself an aphorism on collaboration, for the piece developed out of hi work with the Argentinian writer Pedro Cuperman, whose understanding of both Patkin's art and Siva are integral in the work. Cuperman's own voice emerges clearly in the short novel he wrote to be exhibited alongside the sculpture, in a group of booklets. The juxtaposition of Patkin and Cuperman, each with his ow kindred yet divergent reading, is, of course, one more site upon which Patkin builds his baroque architecture of intuitive symmetry.

Siva is unpredictable, illusory, androgynous, various, constantly inventing new faces for experiential reality. He makes us believe through the sheer seductive power of the dance. As such, he is the supreme model for creativity, a holistic alternative to the Judeo-Christian God (whom Patkin evokes in a suite of paintings accompanying his glass Siva, one of them showing two hands almost touching, as in Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel God and Adam--and also as in two of the glass arms of Where Each Is Both). In Hinduism, Siva isn't the creator o the world--he's the creator of an image of the world, an image that we believe. He has woven a potent fiction. To accept this principle is a testament of faith as is art itself. And Patkin's inspired act of acceptance makes his work not a statue of Siva, not a representation, but Siva itself.

Siva is so accessible to Patkin's free-associative reading, so capable of mutan allusions, because he himself was born of convoluted beginnings in a number of different cults. Behind Where Each Is Both lies not just Nataraja but a whole lexicon of Sivas--Mahadeva, Sundaramurti, Mahakala, and also the lingam, the Hindu phallic pillar, a fertility symbol evoking not so much biological reproduction as the redirection of sexual energy toward transcendence. It is th connection between such states and the invisible powers of music that drives today's rave dance culture. Transcendence there is usually of the chemically induced variety, but before dismissing it, remember that Siva is intimately associated with the psychedelic datura plant, and that his favorite drink is bhang, a hallucinogenic brew made from cannabis.

Nataraja is simultaneously the wise teacher and the itinerant mendicant, the archetypal social outcast, performing the tango of anarchy that those outside the confines of acceptable behavior inevitably shadow-dance. For all his benevolence, this is a moody and volatile god, at times ferociously angry. With one hand he is capable of vast destruction with the deadly element of fire. Yet he creates with another hand, raises a third hand to tell us not to fear, and points us to safety with a fourth. Patkin has orchestrated this symphony of gestures somewhat differently (his figure actually has six hands), throwing in Carmen, Josephine, and even Michelangelo, but this is still eminently Siva: the enigmatic smile, the frozen, gravity-defying step, the still pose of perpetual animation, the yogic gaze into the beyond where day-to-day existence melts into a meditation on the irreality of everything real, the burlesque swoon of pure passion and pleasure that seduces us into the magical illusion of the creation itself.

Carlo McCormick is associate editor for Paper magazine, New York, and writes about art, music, and other cultural matters for a number of publications.