I like working with things we think we already know. Pop-cultural phenomena, familiar images, shared references.
My work is an invitation to play with perception and notice how meaning begins to shift.
PULPO GALLERY presents After the Glow / Nach dem Leuchten, the first solo exhibition of conceptual artist Joachim Bosse at the gallery in Murnau am Staffelsee; curated by Anika Meier. For the first time, the series For Sale, Ad Memoriam, and DIKTAT are brought together in a single exhibition. A highlight is the soft launch of OPEN DIKTAT, a participatory performance: smartphone in hand, colored pencil on paper.
What was once an event is now a memory of times past. Perhaps of better times. In any case, of something that will not return in quite the same way. Because we have outgrown it. Or because it is no longer possible. Or because it has become obsolete.
Memories of strolling with family through the pedestrian zones of large and small German cities have faded. The grand department stores have disappeared. The warm draft when passing through the first set of doors toward the second. The mingled scent of perfume and food in crowded corridors. In Ad Memoriam, Joachim Bosse lets the illuminated signs of major brands fade-just like our memories-once brightening pedestrian zones.
Places as colorful and radiant as the lights of a fairground. Bosse's panels bearing brand names such as Rolex, Nike, and Marlboro appear like relics from the heyday of consumer culture, when one clearance sale followed another. After Andy Warhol, after Barbara Kruger-only without promise. Consumption no longer promises ascent. It no longer signifies lifestyle. In Bosse's work, consumption is worn out and empty, faded like an old photograph. Black and white.
Today, pedestrian zones lie deserted. Yet the signs announcing Sale still shine from windows and hallways. Clearance-because a store is closing and everything must go. Clearance-because the next collection has already been sent down the runway. Clearance-because something, finally, has to be sold again. In Bosse's work, SALE glows like a billboard.
Bosse, who comes from advertising, appropriates capitalism and consumer culture-with their symbols, icons, and signs-and transforms them into works that remind us that there is a time after the glow. Change. Movement. Progress. The new. NEW hits us in capital letters. And yet, the new will not change our lives.
With his participatory performance series DIKTAT, Bosse invites us to reflect on the near future after the glow. The screens in our hands. DIKTAT is not a writing exercise to improve grammar or spelling. It is a confrontation with our screen time-and with what occupies our hours each day. With OPEN DIKTAT, the artist invites us to transcribe the feed: to document, in careful handwriting, what rushes through the timeline.
Perhaps then, the time after the glow of the smartphone will arrive sooner. Perhaps we will begin to collect memories IRL rather than online. Because doomscrolling, too, will have become obsolete.
