Many-sidedness, along with the consideration of form and space, is the striking attribute of his performances, installations and objects. Klemens Golf was quick to begin linking up installations and live action. Performers, video images and voice/sound combinations are important elements of his work. Abruptly edited sequences with people and faces are interspersed with less frenetic moving footage of landscapes, streets, the fronts of houses. Distributed over several monitors, these endless tapes allow the incorporation of fictitious image levels in the stream of action and even a parallel dramatic narrative based purely on the editing and brightness of the visual material. People, usually a group, are seen to perform actions and rituals outside their usual context. These male fantasies - also the subject of many later installations and tapes - find their metaphor in the repetition of specific gestures - such as ritual washing - and the recurrent appearance of symbolic objects such as the pneumatic hammer. The alternation between selfportrayal and interaction with the participants often produces surreal scenarios. The normal "museum‘ presentation of the work begins only after completion of the action phase that sometimes lasts for hours.
Klemens Golf's urge for artistic confrontation has remained intact during a phase of creative reorientation. The images from the numerous video tapes he pro-duced now appear in new sculptures and objects too. The tension between material and form is especially striking in the series of video objects and sculptures shown for the first time at this year's VideoFest. Golf's reduction of technical necessities to the picture tube or the latter's stake in a monitor image is almost harshly uncompromising. Protective jackets made of elementary materials such as copper, lead or concrete replace TV cases. The new bodies change the appearance of the objects. Whatever the new form - be it fastidiously angular, softly sagging, burdensome or light - it reflects the uncompromising point the work is making. The existing friction between form and substance is exacerbated by design details: velvet nestles up against the cold tarpaulin of a truck, gold glistens alongside gray lead, coarsely structured concrete challenges the delicate pixel fabric of the video image. One thing is certain: Klemens Golf's objects are rarely decipherable at first glance.