馬丁·基本伯格

Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne

Acquired directly from the above by the present owner 

New York, Gagosian Gallery, Prefab, 2008 

Los Angeles, The Museum of Contemporary Art; and New York, The Museum of Modern Art, Martin Kippenberger: The Problem Perspective, 2008-09, p. 249, illustrated in colour

Colour: The colour in the catalogue illustration is fairly accurate, although fails to fully convey the sculptural qualities of the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. Surface irregularities are inherent to the artist's choice of media and working process. No restoration is apparent when examined under ultraviolet light.
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Martin Kippenberger is the archetypal enfant terrible of German art. Coming out of the punk scene, and working across innumerable media and formats, his incessant drinking and extreme lifestyle brought him to an untimely death in 1997 at the age of 44. Untitled is an intense and subversive work that recoils from immediate interpretation. However, Kippenberger’s dissident, seditious character radiates through every element. In its direct engagement with the contemporaneous visual zeitgeist, in its adept exploitation of an unusual medium, and in its unabashed encroachment on societal taboos, it is in keeping with the best of the artist’s oeuvre and a prime example of how his personality suffused his work.

Untitled is typical of the Latexbilder (Latex Pictures) which Kippenberger started in 1990. He made the works by sticking various objects and outlines onto a canvas before covering the whole piece in a thin layer of adhesive rubber. This gives the impression of a ‘second skin’ – masking the details of individual elements, but betraying their outlines and contours. The present work is defined by three Donald Judd-like blocks scaling the left edge of the painting, an oversized dial at the bottom, and the outline of an electric guitar on the right. The rest of the surface is covered with crudely delineated text, basic heart shapes, and miscellaneous dots, flecks, and dashes.

Kippenberger uses the juxtaposition of this childlike innocent imagery, with the sordid implications of black latex, to suffuse his work with a subversive uneasy mood. In this context, the phrases ‘sehr gut’ and ‘no waiting’ take on a condescending pseudo-avuncular tone while the dashes and love hearts appear as misappropriated doodles from a school book. That all of these are covered in the tactile cloying rubber gives the work a pervasive sense of the taboo. This mood was absolutely in keeping with contemporaneous works from Kippenberger’s oeuvre; such as the celebrated sculpture of the same year, Feet First, which explicitly compares Jesus to a Frog, and that Frog back to the artist. Kippenberger relished in engaging with these taboos and used them to compound and intensify his rebellious bad-boy image.

As well as this dark appropriation of the taboo, Kippenberger filled his works with personal references and ‘in-jokes’. They became an ingenious vehicle for the anecdotes that catalysed his popularity, and that still furnish his wider oeuvre. In the words of the critic Jan Verwoert, “Kippenberger made the in-joke a central principle of his work, part of his artistic strategy” (Jan Verwoert, ‘Martin Kippenberger: Museum für Neue Kunst’, Frieze, Issue 75, May 2003, online resource). Crucial to this artistic strategy was the sense of exclusivity, of a closed circle to which only those privy to the punchline were part. In this context, the latex covering takes on an almost prophylactic role, sealing the inner elements of the work below, and preventing the viewer from further interface.

Completed in the same year as the celebrated Tiefes Kelfen (Deep Throat) exhibition in Vienna, this work is from a stand-out moment in Kippenberger’s career. His use of an unusual medium to shock, beguile, and amuse his viewer is typical of his frenetic artistic development. Meanwhile his deliberate encroachment on the realm of taboo betrays the rebellious persona that forms the backdrop to his celebrated oeuvre.