An apple-silver sushi machine atop faux-wood-print glass, an iconic Eighties silver-half-hand coffee table on which sits a trompe l’oeil replica IBM computer prototype designed by German industrial designer Richard Sapper, and created because workers did not trust the new flatscreens and preferred to continue their interaction with the computer as a cube.
A calculator as standard in banking and a 3D chess board also lie at knee level in the young German artist’s first solo exhibition, which speaks of obsolescence and the rate of technological innovation and human/user interaction. His meticulous attention to aesthetic tropes and fascination with language of design significant to both the individual living with the product and the epoch, combine to produce a lexicon of quotation and half-recognisable items assembled in the gallery.
Examining the intersections between 2D representations viewed from a single angle, say on a screen, and the sculptural 3D representation and hand-made reconstruction of things placed within the gallery, there is a crossover between everyday interior strategies for decoration and the established vernaculars of gallery display.
Here, for instance, Auer reconstructs the curtains seen flowing in the background as Patricia Arquette and Charlie Sheen have sex in his luxury banker’s apartment in the 1980s film classic Wall St. Auer places them on lead, suggesting the fulfilment of desire but also the constant state of lust and longing associated with the aspirational credit-card high-living of the Eighties. We live in financial times.
Writer and curator Susanna Davies-Crook caught up with the artist to discuss his exhibition currently on view at Kraupa Tuskany, in Berlin.
Where did the title for the show come from? From a supplement called ‘How to Spend It’, which is part of the Financial Times newspaper. It comes out eight times a year, always with the weekend edition. I know the magazine because my best friend is a banker and he had the newspaper delivered since he was a teenager. I always saw the newspaper through different eyes. When I was 15 it was full of cars, nice hotels, luxury watches, and the way it was presented was basically the highest level in which you can present an object – or a destiny. I decided on this title because if you read it within an art context you immediately think it’s about collectors or the art market, but if you see the show it’s about something else. I like it because it sounds like a question you would ask yourself and not something you’d ask somebody else.
Obviously at the moment this issue is quite pertinent because of the current political and financial climate. How much did that influence you? I have been thinking about the aesthetics of banking for about five years or so, and then there was this thing with Occupy Wall Street, then there was a similar one in Frankfurt, Occupy Frankfurt, and my criticism is of how they deal with aesthetics. I’m using five objects all related to the Eighties: a sushi machine for home, a calculator, then a model of a prototype flatscreen computer made for IBM in 1987. It’s a grey box. There are only three prototypes in the world, one at the MoMA, one at IBM and one with a private collector. The idea of the prototype was a flatscreen with perspective [so] that when you sit in front of the computer you have the feeling that there’s a big block behind the screen. Richard Sapper invented it because he had a big block of blank paper on his table, so when he looked to the left he had this 3D perspective.
Are you reconstructing these objects? The idea with all these objects is that 98.9% of people never saw them in real life, and didn’t even know they existed. The Sushi machine, some people might know abput but most only saw it in movies. The IBM prototype you can only see in pictures, and the calculator is a special one only bankers use. I’m trying to deal with bankers as a real subculture, like punk or graffiti, meaning, they have their own codes and aesthetics, and everything else that makes a subculture a subculture. There’s also a 3D chessboard used in Star Trek in 1987 and featured in every episode where they play chess in a futuristic style. It’s a thinking sport; lots of bankers or intellectual thinkers play chess to train their brain.
Are you really interested in the aesthetics of the interior? Yeah, in the film Wall St. there’s a five-minute scene with a Talking Heads soundtrack of ‘This must be the place”. Basically, Charlie Sheen’s character is moving into this apartment he’s decorating and Daryl Hannah, who plays the interior designer, shows him the newest “coolest” art. They use Julian Schnabel paintings, they buy the newest technical stuff like the sushi machine, they have amazing lamps, all based on the idea of decorating the apartment in the coolest way possible in the Eighties, including art to prove your taste. I’m using the film as a reference but the work is not about the film, the film inspied a lot of people to become bankers, it’s a motivation for me.
So you’re using aesthetic tropes and style guides? Yeah, it’s important to mention that I’m not presenting a nostalgic viewpoint, so the objects are shown on glass with the reflection underneath. Today if you see a calculator or a car in a magazine they always have a deep shadow and a black outline to make an object look three-dimensional and accessible, like they do in How to Spend It for example.
There’s a discussion in your work about the aesthetics of technology, how do you negotiate those relationships? As an example, it stressed me out to install Photoshop. I have no idea about Photoshop, what it’s worth or how it’s made. I’m not interested in computers, I’m not interested in a Macbook as a tool, I’m just using it like everybody else, too. But, what does it mean to have a Macbook aesthetically in your studio and what does it mean to have a Photoshop file open next to a spray can and a piece of wood, what does that mean? You have a real object and you have an image of an object in 3D right next to each other, this is what drives me to work in this direction. For example the IBM screen – its’ not about the invention of the flatscreen but more about how did the flatscreen change office environment? Of course it’s a big decision [for me] to make all these objects and not to order them online or loan them. I try to incorporate shadows in the objects so they look more like an image. I make sculptures but I’m more satisfied when I go to shows to look at paintings because they have no use in a sense. With sculptures you can walk around them and you have the feeling of how heavy they are and I don’t like that. If my sculptures were more like a flat image I would be satisfied. I’m more a fan of painters than sculptors.
How did you decide to do sculpture?
I applied for a painting class and submitted collages. Then the sculpture tutor wanted me, so I have always been searching for solutions to make sculpture.
What made you want to be an artist?
I was fascinated with the style of artists and the way they’re allowed to behave in society – and what the artist means as a cliché.
Florian Auer
How to Spend It
Until May 26 Kraupa-Tuskany, Berlin
Text by Susanna Davies-Crook