Apollinaire said one could paint “with pipes, stamps, postcards or playing cards,
etc.” In her article for our “drawing section”, Camille Paulhan shows us one can draw with a syringe or use a stage as a table for a performance. A pioneer of performance art in the 1970s, Jürgen
Klauke has always paid very close attention to the graphics of his work. Today, tempera ink and colour let him explore the ambiguities of being beyond
the appearance of the body, while his photography turns the body into signs.
After having presented a small retrospective of his work last year, the
Suzanne Tarasieve gallery dedicates its stand at the 2019 Drawing Now Art
Fair to the artist (March 28-31).
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In recent years, the question of gender has resurfaced in academic circles, in the arts and in social practices. You lived through a similar time in the 1970s, when the line between masculinity and femininity was called into question. What is your view on these is
sues today? From 1970 to 1975, I gave a lot of thought to this issue. I questioned codes through my drawings and my photos in order to turn them into something new. At the time, condemning social norms through images and photography caused as much disturbance as using one’s body to project multiple identities and genders. And since sexuality was the height of beauty, life and work were carried out at the peak of pleasure (for starters, by pleasurably and benevolently
borrowing parts of the female appearance or of the “other” – while at the same time reevaluating the “perennial” masculine and feminine). Therefore, by breaking with traditional and narrow-minded representations of things. I was studying that field and trying to go beyond it long before the so-called “gender debate”. I did not stop at sexual typology but deconstructed other sociocultural phenomena, like in Das menschliche Antlitz im Spiegel soziologisch-nervöser Prozesse (The Human Face in the Mirror of Sociologically Nervous Processes), my 1976 twelve-part photo tableau. By artistic means, I addressed very early on a phenomenon that is debated openly today. That it has become an issue raised in politics, science, various feminist movements and other interest groups is good news, especially for those concerned. As a matter of fact, certain linguistic outdoings and debates about public lavatories can be quite charming… You mentioned in other interviews that your early photographic works had little to do with pop culture or glam rock (one is reminded of Brian Eno in Roxy Music). But pop culture and art did cover such topics in the 1970s. Music in particular introduced certain scenes to a larger audience. Contemporary musicians such as Lady Gaga, Anohni or Terre Thaemlitz blur the line between man and woman. What do you believe is art’s contribution to this debate today? I once said that Pop art had never really interested me – except maybe for Andy Warhol and his Factory, his films, silkscreens, interviews and the strange people who gravitated around him. As far as music is concerned, I was part two years ago of the “Glam” exhibition at the TATE Liverpool, then at the Städel-Museum in Frankfurt, withTransformer, the photo triptych. The exhibition aimed to link pop music and art. But I believe that pop music, and glam rock in particular, remains stuck on the superficial, on the costumes. I was more impressed by the Velvet Underground, Jim Morrison, Iggy Pop and David Bowie’s attitude and lyrics, and by former figures of subculture. At the time, Lou Reed tackled the issues we are talking about and yes, music can affect the masses – unlike art. There’s nothing new about blurring lines between genders, it’s just that we speak of it more. Our contribution as artists is usually more subtle and radical in the end: I dig deeper. In my opinion, art has gotten to the bottom of this issue and pop singers like Lady Gaga only plunder what we started before; as for young artists, they uncontroversially reproduce marketable works.
You’ve often been compared to Pierre Molinier. He tried to transform his masculine identity to reach the ultimate erotic female object. Your own practice and costumes however, seem to evoke an existential dark clown, an exaggeration of genders in search of the gap between them. What exactly are you
trying to do? Most artistic stances of any worth whatsoever focus on the “in-between” that separates the “beginning” from the “end” in the blink of an eye. They reflect and act upon this instant, this life, this illusion, an endless supply of meaning from beginning to end. I call my work an “aestheticization of the existential” – in one of my “graphic diaries” from the 1970s, I mentioned: “a faint hissing between the two”. In my work on the erosion of male and female, the in-between, the ambivalence, is what inspired me the most. It is what I like to call the “merry mix” – permutation alone only leads to what we already know. Whereas the “in-between” and the “beyond” – beyond representation in general – lead to more space and potential. Mystery and poetry are also a part of it, and what was until then the unthinkable becomes an image. Images are about sexual ambivalence and identity but also about androgyny’s melancholy masquerade. It’s about playing with the individual’s ambiguity: being oneself through a multiplicity of others. Molinier, who was an inspiration to me in my youth and whose work I still cherish today, was rather unusual. What he gave shape to through his images was his life, his obsessions, the reality he experienced and reflected upon day and night. Such is not my case, and that is the fundamental difference between our works. My own inspiration was the frantic life I led in the 1970s, the subculture and different scenes – adding to the mix the right kind of literature and other toxic agents. My artistic projects took place in a playful and pleasurable atmosphere of cold distant reflection. The work I did in the 1970s can be labelled body art, staged photography or conceptual photography. You have often created prostheses for your costumes – such as oversized fabric vaginas or penises in Erweiterung I & II ( Enlargement
I & II) – whose size make them appear clownish. Alina Szapocznikow, David Cronenberg in eXistenZ or Matthew Barney in the Cre
master cycle all work with extensions and physical modifications. In your work, are prostheses an extension or an externalization of the psyche? What do they bring to your art? Exaggeration or intensification are not necessarily clownish – although I am familiar with the melancholy aspect of clowns. But it’s not something I would associate it
with the work you mentioned, Erweiterung I & II, nor with Senfperformance ( Mustard Per
formance) or Rot ( Red). The objects or prostheses have several meanings. First of all, they give food for thought on the expansion of the body. In addition, they shape the image and define its meaning. They also allow me to revisit my earlier drawings through a completely different medium, staged photography, with my body as a projection screen. All these “extensions and expansions” were already present in those first drawings, but seen from another angle. Photography gives the illusion of reality and shows the object in a whole new light.
You have sometimes worn masks, too (like in Erweiterung II, 1972/1973), or makeup as a kind of mask. The word “masquerade” comes to mind here. Are masks or masquerades a way of hiding one’s identity or do
they play another role? Actually, masks do not play such a big part in my work. In Trans
former, you can see a pink sequined domino mask. Just like makeup, it calls to mind the feminine – ornamental, it’s more of a reference to the play on identities. Erweiterung II can bring masks to mind, because my face is completely hidden and the different shapes composing that mask/object are quite suggestive. At that time, I had started working very intensely on masks of another kind, far from sexuality and eroticism. Antlitze ( Faces), a 96-part photo installation (720x400 cm), was born. After the 1976 Olympics terrorist attacks, I started collecting press photos of all sorts of masked terrorists. Later, I had them enlarged in 60x50 cm in order to bring out the grid, which accentuated the mystery of these masked men and the correlation between the images and the media. The whole block was presented for the first time during a photography retrospective and a performance at the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn, in 2000. What interested me was the mask itself, in other words the paradox of those who pride themselves in anonymity while craving media attention. The disguise erases and recreates identity and gender. The “faceless”, constantly portrayed in the media, have become the face and icon of violence through those of us who have learned to read them. And by reading them, we stumble upon the dilemma of good and evil: even the military and special operations units employ similar strategies now – seeking anonymity to hunt down the anonymous, they enter the masquerade, thus becoming one with the enemy. This calls to mind the erosion or blurring between male and female, although in a different ballpark.
Let’s talk a bit more about your drawings. It seems that your photos are self-representations but that your drawings focus on something else altogether. They present very complex and often distorted male and female traits, as a reference to the human condition or our place in the world. What are
these drawings about? My drawings examine the same themes as my staged photos or my performances. I mentioned the connection between photography and drawing. Each medium has its own language and specificity that allow it it to transpose the same thought into a unique art form. It is a ceaseless coming and going around the same reflections: the human condition and our place in the world. I wouldn’t call my staged work self-representation. Staged photography and conceptual photography would be more fitting. As a visual object, my body constitutes the surface upon which the “world as imagination” is projected. Circling back to the drawings of my youth, from 1970 to 1980, I filled out ten diaries (night and day). I have already mentioned the ICH&ICH ( ME&ME), then there was Fag Hag, Ziemlich ( Quite), Sekunden ( Seconds) and other series. This kind of medium not only has two levels of expression, but also two levels of experience: on the one hand, the notes on an outer, daily reality; on the other hand, drawings of an inner world. One could almost speak of two spatial zones: the outside and the inside one. My corporeality and my state of mind were the source of inspiration and the starting point for these drawings. I scanned the body all the way down to the central nervous system and dissected each and every component. I made the variations of life visible and connected them to my notes on reality and the poetic. When I saw KörperzeichenZeichenkörper ( Body Signs-Sign Body) in 2012, I thought of Aubrey Beardsley and his powerful black and white aesthetics. However, Beardsley’s work was very neat and pedantic whereas your drawings are very dynamic and fluid (like tempera-dissolved shapes). What is it about this aesthetic comparison that holds your interest? Works in colour, like Phanto
mempfindung ( Phantom Sensation), Pro
blemlöser ( Problem Solving), or Selbstgespräche ( Monologues), open up a new perceptual field. Motifs are enhanced by layers of colour, successive washings and soakings, in other words by intense manipulation, into
an unheard-of colour, sometimes dazzling, sometimes nearly transparent. Objects, that is to say the body or its fragments, float around the pictorial space, either in a delicately coloured aura or in bright neon light. There are never any flat tints. Colour fades away or blends with the paper: through its presence and luminosity, there is something ethereal, incomparable about it. I also call them drawings – “Zeichnung”, in German –, knowing full well that they are not really drawings but were domesticated by signs (“Zeichen”). Colour transposes the body into the here and now: “urban colour” has been mentioned to that effect. The viewer follows other paths than those presented by the abstract space of black and white drawings. Speaking of space, the drawings represent almost life-size bodies, a scale that can also be found in your photos. Why do you use large formats? Is it to create space, to make bodies more life-like or is there a whole other reason? After several small graphic diaries, Ein Moment wie ein Zungenschlag ( A Moment like a Slip of theTongue) was published in 1977.The large drawings in this big book are the same fixed format as Haltungs
schaden ( Postural Damage) or Kreisel ( Top). In the large photos – 240x180 cm at the most –, the 1:1 format emphasizes the sculptural aspect of image/signs as well as the void surrounding them. Space is not a product of the void, it is swallowed by it. It reveals the fragility of our being as shown by the images. Many of your drawings share the same strong graphics and the same use of negative space. There are also hollows or empty, hollowed-out physical elements. What do these inversions and empty spaces mean? This is especially true of the Körperzeichen
Zeichenkörper, which I’ve been working on since 2011. At the heart of this work is the body, the corporeal or fragments of the body, like in my drawings in colour. They form a kind of signary that keeps anything superfluous out of the pictorial space, emptied out in favour of black and white cold zones. I have shaped the schematic bodies, the torsos, fragments, prostheses and signs of disintegration in such a way that they have become erotically, sexually or existentially charged. My work has reached new shores, its tone, its “sound” have changed. Positive and negative interact, inside and outside, line and surface, empty and full, rising and subsiding. Geometric shapes support and emphasize the escape or the emergence of the organic. They accentuate the mystery of silhouettes, the reflections of rich black bodies and the emptiness of snowwhite spaces mutating into new expressions. White voids and full black silhouettes alike also highlight absence and presence. Minimalist, non-narrative composition, paired with subdued aesthetics, brings us closer to signs – at least I hope it does. In your photography, body transformation is a dominant theme. In what sense do your drawings relate to the body, not as a representation but as a physical performance, considering their size and their complexity? Is drawing a bodily act or an act of recording – as in writing down – through which the body’s presence manifests? Human beings and conflicts associated with them are at the heart of all my work. In my drawings, just like in my photography, figures find themselves in an undefined space – spaceless, placeless; the drawings permeate the emptied-out “pictorial space”, thus creating room for the viewer. In that sense, I also speak of “spaces for reflection or resonance”. In both media, even the minimalist Körper
Zeichen are acts of the mind as well as a physical presence. No matter their size, the monumental also appears in the minuscule. Moving back from today’s drawings to the early 1970s Tages-und Nachtzeichnungen ( Day and Night Drawings), one notices transformations and tackling of the body and mind under different circumstances and thought processes. In the last decades, much thought has been given to the virtual body’s presence or absence; artificial intelligence and robots threaten to make us redundant. At the same time, we are immersed in a worldwide fetishizing of the body, combined with wishful thinking and promises of salvation. We yearn for sheer beauty, eternal life, sexual satisfaction, etc. The general concept encompassing all this is “self-optimization”. It is displayed through fitness, dieting, plastic surgery, implants and so forth. This search for the “perfect body” is rewarded by giving up all forms of “pleasure”, be it physical of psychological. An insatiable desire which my Körper
zeichenZeichenkörper allude to.