EMPTY FRAMES

21st São Paulo Art Biennial, Brasil
September 21st, – December 10th, 1991

Empty Frames

Empty Frames

 

Recording of the spe­cif­ic room light, tem­per­a­ture and hu­mid­ity situ­ation at the time of the Bien­nial set-up. Thermo­graph­ic scan­ning with a hand-held copier (detail, 27x8cm).

Franz John – Empty Frames
21st São Paulo Art Biennial, 1991 (exhibition catalog)

Empty Frames is a series of pro­jects, in which Franz John inte­grates phys­i­cal dis­charging pro­ces­ses into his instal­la­tions. The Empty Frame Instal­la­tion in the Bien­ni­al space is made out of tem­per­at­ure–sen­­si­tive pa­per, which was ex­posed via a port­able copy­ma­chine. It´s just that the copy­ma­ch­ine did not re­pro­duce a sur­face of an orig­i­nal as it would have been usual, but re­act­ed media–­spe­ci­fic by a CCD-chip to its sur­round­ing as a whole, and pro­duced that way the re­cord of an „er­ror–func­tion“. In the course of this pro­cess black­ish graphisms, draw­ings, signs are orig­i­nat­ed on white pa­per, dif­­fe­r­­ing in black­ness, dense­ness and the shad­ing of grey. There is a dia­lec­tic be­tween the pic­ture and it’s con­s­ti­­tuting ma­te­ri­als in eve­ry hand­made paint­ing. On the one hand one can al­ways de­scribe the ma­te­ri­al level, where you can per­ceive col­ors, can­vas and cer­tain tech­niques but no pic­ture, and you are on the other hand un­able to de­scribe why you never­­the­less un­der­stand this ma­te­ri­al in­ven­­tory as a pic­ture; thus the per­­cep­tion of pic­tures is in­deed a cre­a­tive pro­cess, a re­pro­duc­tion in the true sense of the word, a reci­pro­cal ac­tiv­ity in re­la­tion to paint­ing as such, which trans­lates a seen or an imag­ined pic­ture via cer­tain tech­niques and a cer­tain me­di­um onto a pic­ture sup­port­ing sur­face. The hand­craft­ed pro­­duc­­tion of an im­age is al­ways cul­tu­ral con­trol­lable by edu­ca­tion and com­mis­sion of the paint­er and is a con­scious act. Franz John’s Empty Frames are the re­sult of a mech­an­ical way of pro­­ducing pic­tures, ra­ther the model of a com­plex or­gan­i­cal func­tion and just like these nearly un­­con­­trol­­lable. The cha­ot­ic struc­ture of it’s signs cor­res­ponds with the in­fin­ite data which actu­al­ly con­­sti­tute the world of to­day. In so far the Empty Frames are not art but the com­plex trans­la­tion of re­al­­ity into the truth of a ma­chine. To probe onto this ma­chine­made truth as a viewer means to make up one’s own picture, to cre­ate art, an art that is up to date. Text by Markus Müller

(…) Franz John, who al­ready par­tici­pat­ed in 1989, once again brought his hand-held copy­ing de­vice; on the long thermo­paper rolls, he copied noth­ing but the light and tem­pera­ture con­di­tions in the ex­hi­­bi­tion space. He then hung the strips of pa­per on a typi­cal­ly Braz­ili­an post­er frame of euka­lyp­tus wood(1)  in an al­lu­sion to the de­bate over the de­for­esta­tion of the rain forest. Sebastian Preuss
Extract from: German Art in São Paulo, German Art at the Biennial 1951 – 2012,
Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2013

(1) see also: Eukalypse Now, in: Die Zeit, #35/1993