Force majeure can mean many things in the double and triple sense of the word. Already the title reflected the subtle-subversive ambiguity that characterizes the works of Bianca Voss and Wendelin Bottländer.
Force majeure is by definition the incoming, unforeseeable damaging event, the unavoidable catastrophe, but perhaps also the unforeseeable, unavoidable stroke of luck.
However, force majeure can also be understood as the violence in the service of the higher. The damaging event that gives birth to or exposes the beautiful, for example. Or as the violent, higher, thus divine at all? A division of powers was difficult in the case of this exhibition.
In the works of Bianca Voss, it was squash ball prints on a wall of an abandoned sports studio, which she staged with the means of photography, finely observing, in laconic painterly views of space. An unforeseeable stroke of luck, then, that over the years many players in the service of the higher, the beautiful, ignorantly did preliminary work and struck mightily.
In the case of Wendelin Bottländer, the disturbed digital television signal during the broadcast of the soccer Bundesliga turned out to be an unforeseeable stroke of luck. The standardized stadium architecture and player formations were heightened to images surreal in their absurdity. Whether the force majeure sprang from the annually increased TV presentation standardization or from the chaos created in his images was an unusual contest.
In a performance on the evening of the opening, Bianca Voss imitated damage to the object in front of an audience, which was immediately revised. But: can force majeure really be undone?
Photos: Alessandro De Matteis