Konzett Concept Concert KCC no. 10: BEAUTY

Curated by:
Philipp Konzett (visual art) and Michael Mautner (music)

Which color could be better suited to an aesthetic of pure, transcendental, and ideal beauty than the color white? It stands as a symbol of joy, innocence, and immortality – infinity, purity, worthiness, calmness, emptiness.
In 1965 in his Düsseldorf gallery, Alfred Schmela showed the exhibition “Weiß-Weiß.” Joseph Beuys contributed a white-painted liverwurst and a dried cod with just the fins whitened.
Joseph Beuys had a need to pursue a profound understanding of the essence of man and humankind’s relationship to the cosmos. Beauty is the glow of truth, according to Beuys, and not a matter of superficial beauty. Art is not bound to a certain material or a particular form or color, or a specific medium, technique, or method; art is free.
Günter Brus painted his body white; Rudolf Schwarzkogler packaged, among other things, his models in white bandages. The skin of the artist becomes the canvas. Friederike Pezold creates photo series and video films in which, again and again, she inserts her black-and-white painted body as the object of her art; she intends thereby to be both subject and object simultaneously.
In his sculptures and images, Rudolf Polanszky prefers to use various elements of used scrap materials in transparent, metallic and white color nuances, which result in a monochromatic whole. The “liberated” material is elevated to a new structural level and is subjected to a “creative” metamorphosis.
Beginning in 1977, Franz West produced his legendary adaptives, usually made from bandages and plaster. At first, they aided in expressing neuroses as plastic forms, achieved by adapting them to the body and observing the emotional reactions to them. In this light, the abstracted forms acted as prostheses for conducting a dialog with one’s self.