NEUE GALERIE IM HÖHMANNHAUS

FRANK MARDAUS

VERANSCHAULICHUNG ALLES AA, 7260 photographs from collection AA with the respective pertaining film- and photograph no. in a format of 3x3,5 cm each on 11 A-0 sheets ofpaper. Each has 22 columns and 30 rows. They are tacked to the walls overlapping each other in two sections. Total measurements: 5x1,1 and 4,7x1,1 meters. At the Höhmannhauson March 31st 2012, the visitor Georg Goldammer, founder of the Ingolstadt Archive, with a magnifying glass in his hand in front of the partial section (5 metres in length). A mini-mized detail in print of the first A-0 sheet is the title page of this Leporello folder.

“This catalogue was made possible through the support of the programme forartists and publicists dated June 24th 1980 by the Bavarian State Govern-ment.“ A good statement and useful to boot! This was the first thought thatwent through my head after reading again the well-made catalogue about andby Frank Mardaus (Mardaus. Heureka Street. Althegnenberg 2006. Text: Caro-line Rusch). This elder specimen as well poses a lot of questions. No repea-ted reading yields any information concerning the date of issue, the occasionor even a concrete exhibition project which such a publication could accom-pany. Even the artist’s name doesn’t meet a typographically untrained eye,even though it forms a vertical bordure on the cover. Well hidden in the jacketthere is the text concerning the photographs depicted on the inside. FrankMardaus clearly likes to put riddle upon riddle on the seemingly obvious: Yousee what you see, but its content remains hidden and does not give itself awayon the first glance. The seeing eye must search for itself, must make senseof what is before it. This seeming obviousness is but the skin of things; it isthe viewer’s turn to make the images visible and thus meaningful. This phenomenon and its meaning for the way to grasp an environment in-creasingly flooded with not only optical stimuli is a familiar, everyday aspectof our way to see the world. It serves as the basis for a conscious, almost stra-tegically smuggled in „interference factor” in the photo installation Vertrau-lich. Nur für den Dienstgebrauch (Confidential. For Official Use Only) by FrankMardaus. His new exhibition in the New Gallery of the Höhmannhaus goes bythe same name. The exhibition is at the same time a mere idea, an existingobject of art and an experiment and it transforms photography, artistic in-stallation and the artist’s central thinking into archives in an unmistakableaesthetic form. The artist’s poetic photographs form a contrast to the analytical concept thatis charged with tension. The photographs bespeak a sensitive imagery, cou-pled with close and emphatic attention that is always meditative, regardlesswhether the mood is slightly melancholy or full of a wry humour.The widerange of such a view has been Mardaus’ artistic material for three decades,resulting in portraits, street photography, natural and urban sceneries and in-tricate narrative photography. Fine examples of the latter are blu, parts ofwhich were acquired by the Augsburger Kunstsammlungen, a poetic photo-graphic report covering of the Rumanian town Sovata and its bathing guestsand the sequence NAK fabrics (about the textile plant Neue Augsburger Kat-tunfabrik, founded in 1885 and closed in 1996). It is an expressive portrait ofa ruined industrial area which allows a glimpse of the Golden Age of textilefactories in Augburg. Shortly afterwards the plant was pulled down.For the first time now, Mardaus has made his whole artistic oeuvre (in)ac-cessible for public presentation. The idea behind it is as simple as it is valid:

More than 7000 photographs have been minimized to the size of a stamp andare shown on DIN-A 0 size posters. The combination of miniature format, printeffects „lacking” in quality together with a seemingly boundless quantity con-fronts the audience with a looking task that is almost impossible to manage.For Mardaus it is an effort to grasp everything that met his photographic eye. Another part of the installation is a rather complex alternative, albeit a coldcomfort: All films have been microfilmed and can be viewed with the help ofa microfiche reader. Now the photographs can be enlarged in details accor-ding to the individual viewer’s interest, without, however, the quality gettingmuch better. Parallel to the minute photographs there are minimized diaryentries and sentences on show, resembling bar codes which are connectedto the photos in form and dimension. In an almost sacred seeming showcase presentation there are further 48 staples of microfiches stacked to forman associative battery of ideas – just as if Mardaus wanted to remind the au-dience that this is, after all, a project in classic style. Vertraulich. Nur für den Dienstgebrauch has been published, almost as a finalform of unchangeable officialdom, complete with ISBN no. and complete bio-graphical addenda : „From the Ingolstadt Archives: Vol.1: Collection AL-001-006: All recorded texts and references on collection AA, from 1971 to 2012.2996, minimizing factor 42, 10 mikrofiches, ISBN 978-875125-438-5 Vol. 2.1:Collection AA: All photographic prints, 1977-2011. 7392 photographs, mini-mizing factor 24, 77 mikrofiches, ISBN 978-3-875125-439-2 Volume.2.2.: Col-lection AA-NEG: All contact prints, 1977-2011. 2651 replica, minimizing fac-tor 24, 28 mikrofiches, ISBN 978-3-875125-441-5“.At first glance, the concept and self-description as presented by Mardaus mayseem neutral and detached, but in fact it is emotionally charged in content.The photographs we see – the brilliant artistry and quality of which can onlybe guessed at – are first and foremost images of life. They mirror Mardaus’personal and artistic biography, his whole emotional archive, as well as thatof the couple Frank and Caroline Mardaus, his wife and co-artist, who ac-companies his work in a literary manner. The encyclopaedic idea of the ar-chive works contrasts with a visual retreat, due to the presentation form cho-sen by the artist. The viewers’ curiosity is kindled in proportion to the actualwithdrawal and drawn into the spell of the visible, invisible photographicmessages. It is an „aesthetics of disappearance” (Paul Virilio) the photographer not on-ly optically flirts with. He applies to our immediate seeing capacity by juxta-posing a pleading for „time to see”. The latter is necessary to be able to seeproperly, to make sense of what you see. Against this background, time forMardaus is not only a temporary flowing, waning and flowing state, impossi-ble to grasp. For him time is a material to work with. Within this notion, photo-

Obviously InvisibleAbout Confidential. For Official Use OnlyA Project by Frank Mardaus

graphy - as time suspended - manifests itself as a visualized reconstructionof remembrance. In the shape of a huge volume of images Vertraulich. Nur fürden Dienstgebrauch is an instrument of poetic adjustment and liberation aswell as an artistic perspective. In his own substantial working biography„Werkbiographie 1977-2012” Mardaus states: „Chosen motifs in their em-phasis and composition hint at a possibility of transition to a New World, i.e.from a photographically recordable state, making sense in itself and in its de-tailed rendering, to an unknown next time. The presence shown in the photo-graphs is a presence of waiting.”Vertraulich. Nur für den Dienstgebrauch is, above all, an analytical conceptwhich critically questions the readability of photographic images in generaland in particular. The notion of „confidentiality” in the title might very well re-fer to the artistic device of minimizing, which requires a heightened attentionand concentration, almost a detective’s scrutiny and thus might bear a distantrelation to Criminal Identification Department work. But also personal, pri-vate, even intimate matters which are to be strictly protected form parts ofthe overall theme. Yet the firmness of this concept as a photographic-artisticinstallation lies in the wondrous balance between its structural coherency andits great poetic freedom. The project always oscillates between seeing and notseeing, between to be seen and not to be recognized, between uncovering andfrustration, decoding and withdrawal. Also, apart from all personal, artisticand biographical implications, it can be read as a humorous hint reflecting thefamiliar expectations of museum art perception and as an ironic extension ofthe idea of retrospective.The serial staccato of the photograph and text sequences reflect time not on-ly as an order of living, development and cognition but as a handy artistic de-vice in that the form of presentation causes a natural slowing down of access.What seems to be right before our eyes turns into something hard to discern.Last but not least Frank Mardaus provokes, not wholly unintentionally, astrong desire to be able to see the „real” photographs in a „real” way. And inan entirely new one, of heightened intensity.

Thomas Elsen

ZU BESUCH BEI JULIA, view of the installation/exhibit: One photograph of a total no. of 7392 on the 19th of the total 77 microfiches of volume 2.1. On the fiche of the stack AL-LES/ALLES 50/50 AA-00355-18 can be found in the 3rd row, column 11 and is reproduced here by the microfiche reader brand Kinderman FR 6 Terminal of the State and CityLibrary Augsburg, which was installed at the occasion of the talk with the artist/reading on April 17th 2012. The unit enabled the visitor to view of the whole published collection.

VERANSCHAULICHUNG AA, DAS FLICKEN DER ZEIT; not on show but object of the archive; enlargement from middle format black/white negative film Ilford FRA4 Plus (developedon February 3rd 1998), enlarged on March 11th 1998 to format 18x24 cm on Ilford MG IV; in Palermo’s old harbour on January 8th 1998; Hasselblad 2000 with Planar 80 mm lens.The photograph is one of a total 7392 of collection AA and can be found on the 33rd of the 77 microfiches of volume 2.1 of the Ingolstadt Archives (published at MaroVerlag). Thephotograph with the no. AA-00725-09 can be found there in the first row, column two.

AA-00

VERANSCHAULICHUNG AA-NEG; not on exhibit but object to the archive: Contact sheet of a middle format colour negative film Agfa Optima 400, enlarged under use of a masking,put together from Fujicolor photo papers 14 and 17 cm, punched four times; the single shots are digitally turned. The photograph was taken in the old town quarters in Palermo inJanuary 1998 with a Hasselblad 2000 and the Planar 80 mm lens, as a black/white print this contact sheet is one of a total 2651 in the collection AA-NEG on the 8th of the 28 mi-crofiches of volume 2.2 of the Ingolstadt Archives (published at Maro Verlag). The film with no. 726 (manually labelled and additionally marked as IA-NEG-745) can be found therein the sixth row, column three.

AL-001-06-810OD-05-02-02–/–19.7.1998 ODc–/–Abends Budapest, Privatzimmer bei Erebet-Bru�cke–/–OD-05-02-02–/–20.7.1998 AA-00821/2–/–Budapest–/––/–20.7.1998 ddODc–/–Zug richtung Bukarest, EC Traijan Alba Julia–/–OD-05-02-04– /–21.7.1998 ODc–/–Sigisoara-Schäßburg–/–OD-05-02-06–/–22.7.1998 AA-00824/7–/–Sigi-soara–/––/–22.7.1998 ODc–/–Sigisoara- ganz im Zeichen der mittelalterlichen Oberstadt–/–OD-05-02-07–/–23.7.1998 ODc–/–Sovata–/– OD-05-02-07–/–24.7.1998ODc–/–Sovata, Saline, Lacul Ursa–/–OD-05-02-07–/–25.7.1998 AA-00829/832–/– Sovata–/––/–25.7.1998 ODc–/–Sovata Tirgu Mures–/–OD-05-02-08–/–26.7.1998AA-00833/836–/–(Fahrt nach) Konstanza Hotel Intim–/––/–26.7.1998 ODc–/–Constanza Konstanza morgens–/–OD-05-02-08–/–27.7.1998 AA- 00837/842–/–Ha-fenpromenade Kodenstanza–/––/–27.7.1998 ODc–/–Konstanza schlafe sehr schlecht–/–OD-05-02- 08–/–28.7.1998 AA-00843/4–/–Histria–/––/–28.7.1998 ODc–/–Midai Viteazu morgens zum autogara nord–/– Histria–/–OD-05-02-09–/–29.7.1998 AA-00844/5 u. 850–/–Tulca, Donau–/––/–29.7.1998 ODc–/–Tulcea–/–OD-05- 02-10–/–29.7.1998 Sa–/–Bei Lux 22°–/–OD-01-02-49–/–30.7.1998 ODc–/–Tulcea, mit Ruderbötchen gefahren–/– OD-05-02-11–/–1.8.1998 AA-00846/849–/–Bukarest–/––/–1.8.1998 ODc–/–Bukarest Eintritt Parlamentsgebäude–/– OD-05-02-13–/–Rino – Idee–/–OD-05-02-16–/–5.8.1998 Sa–/–Ungarnfahrt–/–OD-01-02-51–/–14.8.1998–/–Freitag 22.30h–/–Die Leute im August–/–Susanna erzählt wie sie immer etwas als Clochard lebt, diesmal ihr Urlaub in Montreal.Es geht ihr um dieErfahrung, und zwar nicht die Erfahrung etwas bestimmtes zu tun, zu können, sondern eine BEstimmte Erfahrung um ihrer selbst willen gemacht zu haben. ZumBesipiel wie man sich verhält, wenn man an der Uni von Montral den Wächtern entgeht. In Hausarbeiten schreibt sie von der Erfahrung, die Ödipus machte imVergleich zu der, die der Leser beim Lesen bzw, er Zuschauers eines glaichnahmigen Theaterstü�ckes macht. –/– Frank geht um halb elf ganz erwartungsgemäßzu seinem Bett. Er schreibt an diesem Abend nur noch zwei kurze Absätze und ergänzt diese am nächsten Abend. Da hatte er bereits wieder ein kleines Ku�gel-chen genommen, denn der Morgen schien so träg und ohne An und Trieb zu werden, ganz ungwußt in der Ecke, bedauerte es ihn um Caro, die noch drüben schlief,und auch um die viele Arbeit, die zu tun war. –/–Matthias hat die Psychprüfung mit neun geschrieben Seiten abgeschlossen, er fährt mit uns am Donnserstagabend mit dem Rad durch den Siebentischwald, als Gumpenmatti springt er in den Zusammenflu�ß zweier kleiner Bäche, von den Bäumen tropft es, Dunst sebtu�ber die Wiesen, rot ist noch der Himmel, er sieht einen seltenen Eisvogel. Frank und Caro gehen noch in das Zebra auf fünf kleine Dunkle, Caro ist so froh, daßSammy die neue Arbeit bei Damian gefällt. –/–Nicht muffig, wie noch vor kurzem, sondern äußerst redselig taucht er auf, als er von der tschechischen Grenze zu-rückkommt. Es war durchaus anstrengend, und es wäre kein großes Wunder gewesen, wenn im alles gar nicht zugesagt hätte, bei 40 Grad Hitze haben sie in ei-ner Plastikfabrik, in unmittelbarer Nähe zu einer M�üllanlage Rohre isolieren m�üssen, das Hotel war gerade neben einem Atomkaftwerk, doch der Geselle, derihn lehren wird, Chris, liebt seinen Beruf und Sammy kann alles fragen, was er wissen muß. Caro und Sammy sind sehr froh, einen guten Platz gefunden zu ha-ben. –/– Caro hat am morgen mit Bezi telefoniert. Die Sonne schien, ihre F�üße waren auf meinem Schreibtsich, ich begann bereits an Apple zu wursteln, Bezi wein-te, noch immer, und sie ist jetzt immerhin schon 50, kommt sie nicht mit der Situation der Geburt der Zwillinge zurecht. Caro ist auch schlimmes passiert, aber,so sagt sie, da ist sie härter im Nehmen. –/–Rorbert Fischalek kommt und hilft mir, als das Quark wieder einmal nicht geht. Da sieht er die Tasse, aus der ich Teetrinke, er meint das seine ja seine. Und in der Tat, ich habe sie ihm einmal geklaut, als er sie wieder unten hat stehen lassen. „Fr�üher hatte ich sechs, jetzt ist mirdie letzte zerbrochen“, „die vorletzte“, meinte ich. –/– „Die waren alle von Caro, sie hat ja damals eine Töpferlehre gemacht“. Da war ich platt, so oft hab ich ausdieser etwas elliptisch deformierten, aber schön großen Tasse getrunken.“ –/– „Ja, du weißt vieles von Caro nicht“, meint Robbi lachend. Caro kennt ihn seit sie18 ist, da war Robbi 16. –/–Mattias ist heute wohl so halb im Schlamm

Left: ALLES/ALLES 1/50; Installation view, 115 microfiches in one stack on a plexiglass surface in a show case (total height 2,2 m width 80 cm); right: detail of the microfiches, sha-de. Not depicted: ALLES/ALLES 2-49/50, installation, 48 stacks of 115 microfiches each which are identical with the stack ALLES ALLES 1/50, glass show case with two glass shel-ves.

Frank MardausVertraulich - Nur für den DienstgebrauchMarch 22 – May 20, 2012

Curator/Text: Thomas Elsen

Translation German/English: Christina HirsonLayout: Frank Mardaus / Felix WeinoldPrinted by Joh. WalchKunstsammlungen und Museen AugsburgNEUE GALERIE IM HÖHMANNHAUSMaximilianstr.48, D-86150 Augsburghoehmanngalerie@augsburg.dewww.kunstsammlungen-museen.augsburg.de

©2013 Kunstsammlungen Augsburg, author and artist

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VERANSCHAULICHUNG ALLES AL; 40x20 cut-out of a sheet of paper; the collection AL, all stored diary entries, printed on 17 A-O paper sheets with 26 columns and 27 rows each,tacked on the wall overlapping each other on the upper edge in two rows, total measurements 7,5 x 2,2 m; 11934 A-4-text pages of the collection AL are minimized to 15,5 % (andeven more so for the print and then coloured).

Aus dem Ingolstädter ArchivMaroVerlag, Augsburg 2012

Bd. 1: Sammlung AL-001-006:Alle gespeicherten Texte und Verweise, insbesondereauf die Sammlung AA, von 1971 bis 2012.2996 Seiten, Verkleinerungsfaktor 42, 10 Mikrofiches, ISBN 978-3-875125-438-5

Bd 2.1: Sammlung AA:Alle fotografischen Abzüge, 1977-2011.7392 Fotografien, Verkleinerungsfaktor 24, 77 Mikrofiches, ISBN 978-3-875125-439-2

Bd.2.2: Sammlung AA-NEG:Alle Kontaktabzüge, 1977-2011.2651 Abbilder, Verkleinerungsfaktor 24, 28 Mikrofiches, ISBN 978-3-875125-441-5