FUTURES
Publikation zum 2. Jubiläum von PLATFORM3 München, als Ergänzung zum Künstlerkatalog PLATFORM3 works. Die Natur dieser Publikation ist ausdrücklich dokumentarisch. Fotografien: Jörg Koopmann. Herausgeber: Birgit Pelzmann, Nikolai Vogel, Marlene Rigler für PLATFORM3-Räume für zeitgenössische Kunst. München, 2011
Publikation zum 2. Jubiläum von PLATFORM3 München, als Ergänzung zum Künstlerkatalog PLATFORM3 works. Die Natur dieser Publikation ist ausdrücklich dokumentarisch. Fotografien: Jörg Koopmann.
Herausgeber: Birgit Pelzmann, Nikolai Vogel, Marlene Rigler für PLATFORM3-Räume für zeitgenössische Kunst. München, 2011
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himself on one of the strips of grass between the garbage cans and<br />
the parked cars and began to portray his environment in all its<br />
bizarre detail. He painted the apartment buildings, the mall with its<br />
shoppers, the high rise, and the House of Silverbacks.<br />
But one day – he was painting a family of four who sat in a<br />
shopping cart and were moving it forward with their own breath –<br />
René felt the urgent need to relieve himself. He was conscientious<br />
enough to interrupt his work to make absolutely sure that no accident<br />
would happen – leaving the father and the mother he was depicting<br />
headless, although the children’s feeble puffs would not be powerful<br />
enough to move the cart by themselves. He hurried to the building<br />
that contained his family’s living quarters and his former studio, and<br />
pushed the elevator button. As the boy waited for the elevator to<br />
descend from the 70th floor, his urge became so strong that he had to<br />
hop from one leg to the other. When he was finally riding up in the<br />
elevator, René was so desperate that he had to pinch himself hard<br />
in order not to burst. The pain he inflicted on himself momentarily<br />
distracted him from his urge to urinate. But this did not suffice, since<br />
the apartment of the Magritte family was on the sixty-first floor<br />
and the elevator ascended even slower than it had descended. René<br />
might as well have remained downstairs, for by the time he finally<br />
stood in front of the door to the apartment, his pants were dripping.<br />
Needless to say, Madame&Monsieur Magritte forbade him<br />
to paint from nature for several weeks. This interdiction remained<br />
in force until René could convince them that such a calamity would<br />
never happen again.<br />
And indeed, he became much more cautious. For one, he<br />
refrained from putting Cognac in his breakfast coffee, and gave<br />
up the recommended glass of wine before lunch. Moreover, he took<br />
up painting in close proximity to the elevator and was careful to<br />
note even the slightest urgency of mictoration, which meant, in the<br />
language of the time, having to pee. At the first hint, he threw down<br />
the paintbrush and dashed off in the direction of the elevator,<br />
regardless of the fact that the landscape he was painting – which<br />
was, peculiarly, situated within an interior scene – still lacked all<br />
lighting. But as he approached the elevator, he had to witness the<br />
doors slowly closing on him. As the artist hammered against the<br />
closed doors with his fair painter’s hands, they merely responded<br />
with a metallic thud, for the elevator was already making its way<br />
back to the upper floors.<br />
Again it took several weeks until René regained permission<br />
to work on one of the strips of grass. Initially, Madame&Monsieur<br />
Magritte had even thought that giving him another chance was out<br />
of the question, for it seemed that painting had something to do with<br />
his ongoing stained state. René’s honest effort, his willingness to<br />
forego all stimulating drink, which beset him with the occasional<br />
withdrawal symptoms, finally brought Madame&Monsieur around.<br />
It was not least the residents of the housing development who<br />
contributed to this decision: they had become quite accustomed to<br />
the painting lad with the strained expression on his face.<br />
With a strict countenance, Madame&Monsieur reminded their<br />
son what was at stake, but René was fully aware of this, and he<br />
entered the courtyard of the housing development just as Adam&Eve<br />
42<br />
would have entered the Garden of Eden had they been given one<br />
last permission to enter it after the incident with the apple.<br />
René swore by all his role models and his future progeny to use<br />
this chance to the best of his abilities.<br />
As a first precaution, he moved his work space to a piece<br />
of lawn abutting the elevator shaft, regardless of the trash bins<br />
with their intensive smell of organic waste. Following this, he calculated<br />
the approximate point in time when the modicum of firewater,<br />
which he secretly imbibed, would make itself noticed. When the time<br />
came, he completed, with several apt swipes, the propellers on the<br />
heads of the black birds on his canvas, which were smoking cigarette<br />
butts on the neighboring lawn, laid the brush aside and calmly<br />
walked towards the elevator. Only on the last meters did he begin<br />
to trot to avoid unnecessarily wasting time. Even if the elevator were<br />
on the top floor, everything would go smoothly this time.<br />
On the piece of paper taped to the elevator door, René<br />
read that the maintenance would take until after lunch, at the latest.<br />
In his despair, René decided to do it the way he had observed it with<br />
Remy. The clever dog would look for a semi-dense shrub, and<br />
René found one, in front of which the mall’s delivery van was parking<br />
that day. Just as he was beginning to go about his business, the<br />
van set off for its delivery, and the ever-sober janitor grabbed René<br />
by the collar and eagerly proclaimed that he would immediately<br />
deliver him to Madame&Monsieur so that he could receive his just<br />
punishment. This was the end of his plein air painting, and the young<br />
artist was left with nothing but the realization that, even with a<br />
mere glance through the window, one can see in one’s head what<br />
is occurring outside or what will occur there or what could occur<br />
there. Had he not, given the natural state of so many things, already<br />
created his own interpretation of it all?<br />
43