An Artistic Journey
Berlin-Prag-Bratislava-Budapest-Arad-Bucharest, 1995
Excerpt from catalogue “Balt Orient Express” Ifa Gallery, Berlin, 1996
(…) Looking from west to east, perceiving specific differences as something strangely exotic, approaching them tentatively with greatest empathy: that´s how you may also sum up the work by Franz John. Using a hand-held copier, he takes pictures from walls and objects on the individual legs of the journey. He then reconstructs them authentically within the installation. During the trip, he has taken instantaneous photos with a laptop and a connected observation cam, to group them subsequently into a multifaceted overall picture. He draws primarily in visual perception, rendering it ever more abstract up to the point where he is logically induced to operate with fictive photography. The pictures are no more realized but only described, they exist only in his mind and are jotted down in notes and added to the undeveloped film. These fictions, practised by a number of artists involved in the project, take the conceptual gesture to its final consummation (…)
Dr. Barbara Barsch, German Institute for International Relations (ifa)
Translated into English by Johannes Hampel
Fellow artist travellers involved in the project:
Teodor Graur, Dan Mihaltianu, Amalia Perjovschi (Bucharest), Judith Angel (Arad), Markus Orsini-Rosenberg (Vienna), Boris Ondreicka (Bratislava), Vladimir Kokolia (Brno), Michal Nesazal (Prague), Karen Kipphoff, Franz John (Berlin).