Horst Münch: Our War

Nervous Laughter

Exhibition catalogue with a text collage (German/English) by Horst Münch
80 p with 45coloured and 25 b/w illustrations
320 x 220 mm, clothbound with embossings on title and spine

ISBN 978-3-936859-82-9

34,00 €

The nervous laughter

When you open a newspaper nowadays and let those major geopolitical discussions into your life it is indeed possible to be overcome by a kind of nervous laughter. There are plenty of appetisers, which is to be? The crisis in Syria, Irak, Afghanistan, North Korea, Somalia ... We seem to be repeatedly and increasingly afraid that the sky is going to fall on our heads. Thus the new world order staggers blithely from one headline to the next: ever at the thick of it with his »quirky eye« – Horst Münch. The small screen and to a greater extent the larger ones also are already in the business of distorting our view of every conceivable problem concerning the map. Where they could actually explain something, but ... should they do so in the first place? Isn’t Berlin supposed to be here? No, that must be China! I can clearly recognize Russia, but why does Europe begin there? The conversations in front of the images are the same. Everything begins here and ends there, which is precisely what connects it. The demarcation of the USA along its own borders seems to be just as provisional as the border of Irak; is that the much-vaunted proximity? This is how the world within art history has always arrived at representation, be it on the Erector Brothers’ maps or some or other piece of abstract painting. Here, too – battles between coastlines that could be animals and surfaces that are blunt or garish like nothingness or an overloaded echo sounder. And Horst Münch? Is he responsible? If he is able to explain something to us then surely it is with his text! And he says: »Nature is wasteful beyond all measure, indifferent beyond all measure, devoid of intentions or consideration, devoid of mercy and justice, fecund and arid and uncertain at the same time; it is indifference as power«.

Exhbition:
Künstlerhaus Palais Thurn und Taxis Bregenz, 24/11–30/12/2007