September 26h – October 14th 2022
Photo: Bojan Mrđenović
MANFRED WILLMANN
“RECONCILED” EXISTENCES
OR
AN EXPEDITION THROUGH
THE FLOWER WINDOW[1]
To eliminate an alternative to existence as a pattern and as a possibility, to adopt the pattern in its entirety, therefore, too, its segment of programmed questionability, is in a sense a decision to choose the “attainable” happiness of limited sovereignty. And since we more or less consciously nurture this decision as a stand-in for the existence for which “we are still preparing”, effectively spending it, not only do we near the pattern, but we create it precisely in doing so. Thus, regardless of how much we formally reject it, we become the stakeholders in this attainable happiness.
Without giving in to pathos, Willmann reveals a well-known, albeit denied fact, that this conditioned happiness is not as two-dimensional as we create it in the defence of our own otherness and difference. Because, alongside Willmann, except without his simple wisdom, we peer into this “isolate”, sneering at its exoticism, by which the irrationality of emotional existence is ensured by means of a cat on a leash, whereas the adventure of distant regions is achieved in a guarded park. And this is only its most extreme inner pole, which realizes the ideal of a “modest, neat reality within chaos”, and introduces the firm order of the pattern, which does not pose questions other than those that employ fear, out of which they are posed, to herd into that same order, to the point of fascism of the every-day. Precisely according to this model, the existence of the pattern attains its principles that perpetuate and empower it: it is ruled by the law of returning. The pattern is reaffirmed in a perpetually repeated return to a solid refuge, at all cost. The risk of a non-return determines the duration of the pattern, the matrix of returns expanding the realm of its forms. Punishment – for the courage, programmed according to the pattern, in diverging from it – is the introduction of a new ritual as proof of loyalty, to the pattern as refuge. Guaranteed existence is the pattern. Patterned existence is the guarantee.
Willmann’s inquisitiveness is highly ethical: by recording this existence of o u r s, he never falls into the trap of labelling as kitsch somebody’s ability to persist. On the other hand, he also does not overestimate anybody’s attempts at otherness, merely studiously recording resistances. Without wonder, he discovers that a storm in a teacup is still a storm, that a l l forms of perdurance perdure even in a reduced space. That the “right to a tragic sense of life” is realized even in the “small” forms and crammed patterns of “accepting everything”, even in the substitutes of “reconciled” existences, because perhaps there are no others.
a. g.
(Albert Goldstein)
[1] Text written by Albert Goldstein on the occasion of Manfred Willmann’s exhibition at the Archive TD Gallery, Zagreb, 13th March – 12th April 1981, referring to the series “Schwarz und Gold” (and published in the book of the same title).
Manfred Willmann is an independent photographer, curator and editor based in Graz, Austria. His conceptual works and documentary photographic projects have been exhibited in Austria and internationally; he has published a number of artist’s monographs, among his most important are: “Schwarz und Gold” (1981); “Die Sieger” (1989); “Das Land” (2000); “Werkblick” (2006); “Blitz & Enzianblau” (2017).
In 1974, after graduating at the School of Arts and Crafts (Kunstgewerbeschule) in Graz, Manfred Willmann started organizing exhibitions of contemporary photography (Fotogalerie im Schillerhof); 1975 he became head of the photography department of Forum Stadtpark artists’ association and developed a continuous exhibition program there; between 1979 – 1997 he co-organized (with Christine Frisinghelli) the annual “Symposiums on Photography” in the frame of steirischer herbst festival of contemporary art in Graz; 1980 he founded the quarterly journal of Camera Austria International, and acted as its artistic director and publisher through 2010. Since 2003 the institution Camera Austria is located at Kunsthaus Graz.
Manfred Willmann has curated numerous exhibitions and edited artists’ books and exhibition catalogues in the field of contemporary photography. His main interest is in the photographer’s involvement with the World, and the question of how, in the context of a global visual culture, photography is able to approach, with visual and emotional intelligence, the complexities of the contemporary world.
