Georg Paul Thomann

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Poster of a documentary about Georg Paul Thomann (2018)
Georg Paul Thomann's grave in Hall in Tirol; the object was created by monochrom 2005

Georg Paul Thomann is a fictional Austrian artist who was developed by the art group monochrom and who was sent to the São Paulo Biennale in 2002 as the official representative of Austria . The action is one of the key actions in monochrom's work and is a much-cited work of art from the 2000s.

In 2001, monochrom was invited by the curator Zdenka Badovinac to represent Austria at the São Paulo Biennale. The political climate in Austria (due to the black and blue government that had recently come into office ) made it impossible for the members of the left-wing group to represent Austria directly. Therefore monochrom decided to create the fictional artist Georg Paul Thomann and to create a 500-page book about his life and work, and to send Thomann to the Biennale as the official representative of Austria. This was announced in an official press release. The fake has not been uncovered for a long time or journalists deliberately decided not to expose the fake.

Further developments to Georg Paul Thomann arose in the course of the Biennale. The artist Chien-Chi Chang was invited to represent Taiwan . However, the administration swapped the country name on its exhibition area overnight for the label Museum of Fine Arts, Taipei . As Monochrom found out, China had threatened to withdraw completely from the Biennale (and thus with massive diplomatic difficulties) if the organizers dare to challenge the one-China policy . An open letter from Chang went unanswered. On behalf of Georg Paul Thomann, monochrom then invited artists from numerous countries to show their solidarity with Chang by donating adhesive letters from their own country labels to Chang to enable him to re-label "Taiwan" at his exhibition. The intention of monochrom was to make an artistic statement against the imperative of the controlling society of fragmentation and isolation of the competitive art markets and exhibitions. Numerous newspapers from Asia reported on the action. The Taipei Times published a report on the action with the headline "Austrian artist Georg Paul Thomann saves 'Taiwan'" ("Austrian artist Georg Paul Thomann saves 'Taiwan'").

On July 25, 2005, monochrom reported in a press release: "The artist and author Prof. Georg Paul Thomann died on Friday night as a result of a tragic accident." On July 29, 2005, monochrom staged his funeral in Hall in Tirol ; his grave can be found in Hall ever since. Georg Paul Thomann's tombstone shows an engraving of the URL of the website accompanying the project.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ orf.at: "Context-Hacking mit Eigenblunz'n", January 28, 2013
  2. ↑ Profile: "20 Years of Monochrome: Back to the Nerd", January 28, 2013
  3. ^ Falter: "Puberty at the highest level", edition 6/13
  4. ↑ Der Standard: "Blunzen gegen den Boulevard", January 28, 2013
  5. ^ Oe1 Leporello: "20 years of the monochrome artist group", January 25, 2013
  6. ^ "I am from Austria" - Nobody Georg P. Thomann and the Great Diplomacy | IG culture. Retrieved February 22, 2019 .
  7. ↑ Prof. Georg Paul Thomann has passed away. Retrieved February 22, 2019 .
  8. ↑ Paraflows: vacuum cleaner noise in the identity machine - derStandard.at. Retrieved February 22, 2019 (Austrian German).