Klemens Golf's art is concerned with male fantasies and their effects, appearances, images. This is the basis for his treatment of related subjects such as war, victory, power, for his search for the nature of catastrophes, for his analysis of the female body. He presents the issues in a larger social context, interested in their manifestations in everyday life and society, e.g. in the differing representations by print and TV media. His performances, video tapes and video sculptures record not only everyday situations and objects but also very personal scraps of recollection gleaned from diaries, letters, sketches and photos. Using literature and music, he combines and scrambles the fragments until the different strands of quotation, manipulation, trivia and art are woven into one closely knit fabric. Always dominant is the subjective interpretation of a conscious male identity. In contrast to this self-assurance, the images of women convey vague, fragmentary views of female identity. Golf formulates his own obsession with the female body by presenting images from the misogynic advertising and media world until the accumulation of familiar poses, blow-ups and angles is hard to stomach, declaring his personal capitulation in view of a problem for which he has no solution. At the same time he is fascinated by newsreel images showing the emotions of women in situations linked with dying and death (a woman caresses a corpse in El Salvador), images containing coded references to personal experiences (semi-conscious dreams of youth) and connecting them the male images delivered by war reporters ("Concrete TV", i 989). The suspense of these works is created by the conscious demonstration of di­ vergent impressions. Golf's vi­ deos often use news footage, offer reality-TV-like coverage of catastrophic events. The simultaneously critical and artistic deployment of the material, the stressing of specific sequences by slow-motion and repetition, allows ambivalent, emotional elements to emerge and provokes critical reflection. And so Golfshows himself as an alert, creative observer, questioning accepted models and myths by shuffling individual insights with reproduced images and with his art conveying that the male imagination is not limited to the realm of catastrophe and destruction.
Petra Unnützer. Autobahn; Christa Gamper; Ein Mann und ein Kind; Polaroids II; Air Florida Flight 90 Potomac Crash; National Anthem; Maid Of The Seas; Der Tag. Die Nacht; Detlef Hoffman, unbekannt; Frauenbild