Marcus Herse

Lick It into Shape is about shifting concepts on how ideas manifest. About the question as to how presentation shapes the presented. An impulse that finds a realization in many forms. The work that is open ended to the extent that it seems unfinished. “We are wanderers between the worlds and all we create are in-between stadiums”°. It's about the tension that arises between the possibilities of a situation and the need to put it into shape. The moment when a piece that was completed lives again and demands a new manifestation. Memory, archive and aspiration.*

We are time-bound beings. Because everything flows and withdraws from our grasp, we create images that are supposed to last, to carry us through time and anchor us. But the image and the artwork as a stationary, fixed manifestation have conceptually served their time more than half a century ago. The ephemeral in art has been explored since the 1960s and today we deal with the background radiation of the radical work of Dieter Roth, Bas Jan Ader, Felix Gonzales Torres and the like.

The exhibition gathers a group of artists (all but one) living and working in Los Angeles, whose endeavors present a broad spectrum on the notions of the fleeting and the elapsing. The focus is put on this aspect of their production in a selection of works, some of which are created specifically for the show. While feeling obliged to the idea of radicalism and pushing the boundaries of their work, today there is no need to strike a blow for the elusive. The inclusion of ephemeral concepts by the artists in Lick it into Shape is casual, part of the repertoire, and applied distinctively in each approach.

* Excerpt from the invitation to the artists to participate in Lick it into Shape
° Christian Jendreiko in a publication on Juergen Staack and Tobias Hantmann