Der Tagesspiegel
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
Art World Games: The Video Artist Asta Gröting at Marta Herford
by Nicola Kuhn
"You're super." "Oh, I don't know about that." "No really, you have to think you're super, too." "Why? I don't think I'm super." "But you are good. Really good, in fact." "Oh come on. Why all this?" "Because you are such a terrific person, with so much possibility." It goes on like this for minutes. Is it a recording of a corporate motivation session or one at the psychotherapist? None of the above: a ventriloquist is letting out his most inner thoughts in conversation with his dummy: all the self-doubt and disheartenment, in order to be propped up once more – to no avail – by the creature on his lap.
An uncomfortable scene during which we become listeners against our will – and that four times over. Because the same constellation is projected four times onto the walls of the main gallery in Marta Herford, the museum designed by Frank Gehry that opened last year. Four times chatting, ventriloquist and dummy rattle on about all kinds of things: "You are so good to me." "No, you are to me." "I could never go without you." Or "You don't understand me." "Excuse me?" "I said, 'You don't understand me.'" "But I've been trying so hard." "To do what?"
The Berlin artist Asta Gröting (born 1961) has achieved exceptional introspection with this assemblage of her series of 19 videos entitled The Inner Voice. It suits the organic structure of the museum's architecture as well as the hermaphroditic character of Marta Herford, which sees itself not only as a classic exhibition hall but also as a window onto the design of Westphalia's furniture industry. Asta Gröting's puppet theater is also a crossover in the art world. Educated at the elite academy in Düsseldorf during the 1980s, she had a picture-perfect career ahead of her as a highly successful sculptor. But instead of continuing to find sculptural forms for human organs, she began searching for the seat of the soul, embodied as a voice from the inner depths. Ventriloquists became her most important partners, even her artistic material, and it was for them that she wrote dialogues of shockingly candid conversations about love, death, and fear of failure, to be held with a puppet that resembled the artist herself.
This liaison with vaudeville, the cooperation with carneys, is a risky game in today's art world. Coquetry with kitsch is accepted, even appreciated, as long as one respects the border between high and low art. Asta Gröting has taken some risks and thereby established an entirely new genre. The Inner Voice is like an underground canal between the worlds of vaudeville and high art, which otherwise have nothing in common. Her audience has remained loyal to her. They have perceived the underlying significance, despite the coarse jokes that are a classic element of such stalwart dialogues between ventriloquist and dummy. This utterly artificial situation has a candidness seldom found in the art world.
And something else brings this outsider into the game again, landing at her point of departure and just where she belongs: the humor that is too often incompatible with high art. One of the funniest and darkest depictions of social distinction is her video Worker Teacher Entrepreneur, played by two symbolic gloves – an acid glove and a ski glove. The performers raise their hands symbolically for each new category: "Drinks beer, white wine, champagne," or "heavy smoker, non-smoker, now and then a cigar." Based on Pierre Bourdieu's study Distinction, this role-play initially makes the viewer laugh. Only gradually does its wickedness become apparent.
Asta Gröting's cheekiness makes her an exception in the business. Even her explanation of why she collaborates with the variety milieu has the makings of an affront: it simply puts her in a "better mood." Luckily, her good mood is infectious and has not lead to a slap on the wrist or exclusion. Despite being a freethinker, Gröting still worries about being dropped by decision-makers and curators. The artist blatantly admits it in her video Faster with ..., in which she sends Kaspar König, one of the nation's leading curators, and her Berlin colleague, Maria Eichhorn, on a virtual race in an endless loop. Each of them in their burnt-out wrecks alternately takes the lead. An illegal street race is visible in the background. This simple metaphor makes the point about the bizarre competition between artist and curator. At least in Herford, both Asta Gröting and the museum's director Jan Hoet have safely reached their goal.
Marta Herford, until 5 March 2006; catalogue (Revolver Verlag, Frankfurt/Main) 20 euros.
Nicola Kuhn is an art publicist in Berlin