Wolfgang Flatz

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Wolfgang Flatz (2008)

Wolfgang Flatz (born September 4, 1952 in Dornbirn , Vorarlberg ) is an Austrian action artist , set designer, musician and composer .

Career

Wolfgang Flatz grew up in Dornbirn and Feldkirch . From 1967 to 1971 he did an apprenticeship as a goldsmith in Feldkirch . In Graz he studied metal design at the HTBLVA Graz Ortweinschule from 1972 to 1974 . In 1975 he "emigrated" (original sound) to Munich and began studying goldsmithing at the Academy of Fine Arts and then painting with Karl Fred Dahmen and Günter Fruhtrunk . At the same time he was studying art history at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich . Since 1988 Wolfgang Flatz has held visiting professorships in the Federal Republic of Germany and other countries. Flatz has lived in Munich since 1975.

On July 24th, 2009, the Flatz Museum was opened in his native Dornbirn.

Wolfgang Flatz was run over by a car on May 24, 2012 as a pedestrian at a green light. Flatz, seriously injured, suffered 33 fractures and then had to spend seven months in hospital, temporarily sitting in a wheelchair.

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Poster from Flatz in front of his former studio on the Praterinsel in Munich

One of the most famous Flatz quotes is probably the slogan »Eating, fucking, watching TV«, which he designed for a postcard in a black, red, and gold outfit.

Wolfgang Flatz's projects were and are extreme and always aimed at provocation. According to him, this provocation should serve to strengthen perception in order to counteract human apathy. So he posed z. B. as a naked dartboard that the audience should throw arrows at, or he could be hung upside down as a bell handle on a rope to bang back and forth between stretched metal plates to the sound of a waltz. A less physically painful action was the one for documenta 6 (1977), when he distributed leaflets announcing that he would not take part in documenta; at the documenta IX then took part actually.

In 1996 he worked as an actor (he played himself), set and costume designer in the German thriller Der kalte Finger .

The body

In 1974 Flatz sat blindfolded in the front row during a fashion show at the Hotel Steirer Hof in Graz. As soon as the audience applauded, the 'enthusiastic' visitor Flatz clapped along. At the end of the show that was to become his, he left the hall, still blindfolded, without a word.

This first result of Flatz's engagement with contemporary art, especially with the Happening and the Viennese Actionists , was followed in 1975 by further thwarting of conventional perception and feeling. One of them earned him a stay in the local city prison and subsequent admission to the psychiatric department of the Valduna State Nervous Hospital : when he was wearing a black sack over his head during an exhibition opening at Palais Liechtenstein in Feldkirch, Austria . The repetition of such a hospital stay brought with it another action, in which Flatz stood for twelve hours on a road bridge next to a 140 by 140 centimeter sign, which stated that he had caused an accident at this location with considerable consequences .

In 1992, at the Kassel documenta IX, Flatz physically included the audience in his concept. At Bodycheck / Physical Sculpture No. 5 on the second floor of the Fridericianum in Kassel hung a multitude of cylindrical bodies that filled the entire room, these were similar to the sandbags used by boxers for training, 120 centimeters high, with a diameter of 40 centimeters and a weight of 60 kilograms, which corresponded to Flatz's body weight. Every visitor to the exhibition rooms behind had to go through this forest of sculptures, leaving only a space of 40 centimeters, five centimeters less than the average shoulder width of a person. For this reason, every visitor had to touch the sculpture and push it away. Flatz wrote in his concept paper: "It allows him to move only as a conscious action, as a direct physical and mental confrontation with the sculpture itself."

Autoaggression and Voyeurism

Flatz's performances, which he calls “pieces” (like his later “Demontagen”), are often auto-aggressive , i.e. related to one's own body. During the Carpet campaign , Flatz had himself laid in the vestibule of the Munich Academy of Fine Arts , sewn into a carpet that those who walked in were more or less forced to walk on. Flatz articulated the pain caused by the kicks with a shrill whistle. This “piece” was supposed to last twelve hours. After about a third of the time, however, the human-filled carpet was dragged away by two men and thrown aside.

Another action in Bludenz , Austria , in which Flatz let himself be slapped by a man for 15 minutes while the auditorium was able to watch the beaters and the beaten on a video monitor, was also canceled by a woman from the audience.

Two years later, Jochen Gerz acted in a similar way with his performance ›Purple cross for absent now‹, when he put a rubber cord around his neck, which people could pull and check the result on the monitor.

Even the voyeurism and the direct violence has Flatz provoked again and again. In 1979 he carried out an action in Stuttgart in which he had darts pelted at himself for “prize money” of 500 DM .

Flatz staged another auto-aggressive performance on New Year's Eve 1990 and on Orthodox New Year's Eve on January 14, 1991 in the Georgian capital Tbilisi , where he held a visiting professorship , as in Saint Petersburg . The scene of the event was the old synagogue there , which was used as a cadre and after the collapse as an anarchic cultural center during the communist regime . He hung two steel plates measuring 1.50 by 2.80 meters from the ceiling. Between these he hung upside down, his hands tied. The hands were tied to a rope that a man standing below used to swing Flatz's body back and forth between the two plates for five minutes and let it hit. Following this "bell ringing" a pair danced the Emperor Waltz by Johann Strauss .

Other Projects

Flatz attests to a considerable urge to perfect himself ; For example, in 1984 he not only furnished the “Rosana” hairdressing salon in Munich with the furniture he had designed, but also replaced the usual mirrors with video cameras and monitors.

As a result, he also designed stage sets, for example for the Münchner Kammerspiele . He directs himself, for example for the Munich Opera Festival. Together with Florian Aicher and Uwe Drepper, he won the architecture competition for the Laimer underpass. He realized the video sculpture Model America , an electric chair in which a convict can be seen in agony, and designed exhibitions.

His piece Demontage II is performed in various variations. In the Rosenheim version from 1987, Flatz broke through a wall with a jackhammer while a soprano sang songs from German classics.

In the early 1990s, Flatz sold “Softkiller”, the first computer virus that could be bought. This program was sold for 1,800 DM per disk in a pack of 20. Once launched, the virus showed the artist's head and some warnings. If the user ignored this repeatedly, Softkiller erased the hard drive and destroyed itself. Bavarian authorities became aware of the program and checked whether the offense of computer sabotage had been met. Flatz says: “You make the decision when you buy. Whatever you do with it - that's where the application begins. "

Since around 1990 Flatz has also been working on behalf of companies. In 1991 he designed the outside area of ​​the Siemens AG “Global Leadership Center” in Feldafing on Lake Starnberg . In the same year, he created a large-scale land art object that was only recognizable from the air for the opening of Munich Airport in its approach path. On the occasion of the World Athletics Championships in Stuttgart in 1993 , Flatz designed an installation on Schloßplatz for VIP receptions in the state of Baden-Württemberg , for which he brought together 160 containers and 90 Porsche vehicles.

Another work by the artist under the umbrella term Animal Sculpures is titled Hitler ein Hundeleben (1991–1995), a photographic documentation about his Great Dane , which he called Hitler. Pictures with the titles Hitler's longing look to Austria or Hitler visits the battlefield of Stalingrad show the mastiff in an alpine panorama or a meadow and are provocatively charged by the titles. In the English Garden in Munich, Flatz liked to provoke by calling out to this dog “Hitler Platz” in brutal skinhead appearances.

In December 2009 Wolfgang Flatz appeared as an art expert in the four-part SWR documentary series Never again no idea! Painting next to presenter Enie van de Meiklokjes .

In the Kistlerhof in Munich's Obersendling district , Wolfgang Flatz runs a studio on the sixth floor with a 3200 square meter roof garden called Heaven 7 , which Flatz has been expanding as an art landscape with 23 sculptures from his work since around 1980. These include a brightly colored Cadillac Eldorado (built in 1958), a fluorescent sculpture of the Statue of Liberty and a former attack helicopter whose tail rotor now produces electricity as a wind turbine . This roof garden is sponsored by the Munich-based Hirmer Group, which includes a men's fashion store and a real estate company. Managing director Christian Hirmer is a collector of Flatz works. With the support of graffiti artist Andreas von Chrzanowski , Wolfgang Flatz designed the company's own commercial buildings in the neighborhood with large areas and intense colors with tie patterns. Flatz also designed the exterior and interior of the Hirmer weaving and logistics center in Trudering, Munich .

Some art critics argue that Flatz, because of his penchant for the trivial, is closer to Pop Art than to conceptual or action art . His series of works with titles such as Show me a hero and I'll show you a tragedy, Some more or less important historical incidents or Love and Death are used as examples .

Discography

  • 1998: Physical Sculpture
  • 2000: child prodigy
  • 2000: Love and Violence
  • 2001: meat

Awards

Book publications

literature

Web links

Commons : Wolfgang Flatz  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Dornbirn: Hundreds celebrated the Flatz Museum
  2. ↑ The man who never gives up: "Courage is good!" by Matthias Kampmann on www.mittelbayerische.de ( Mittelbayerische Zeitung Regensburg), August 31, 2012
  3. ↑ a b Capriccio . TV cultural broadcast, January 16, 2014, 30 min. - Author: Andreas Krieger, Editor: Philipp Merz and Editor: Franz Xaver Karl, Bayerischer Rundfunk
  4. ↑ http://www.flatz.net/animal-sculpture/hitler-ein-hundeleben/
  5. ^ According to a radio interview with FM4
  6. ^ Artist Wolfgang Flatz: Seventh Heaven on the sixth floor by Franz Kotteder on www.sueddeutsche.de ( Süddeutsche Zeitung ), October 26, 2013
personal data
SURNAME Flatz, Wolfgang
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian action artist, set designer, musician and composer
DATE OF BIRTH 4th September 1952
PLACE OF BIRTH Dornbirn , Vorarlberg ( Austria )