As of: February 7, 2024, 7:55 p.m
By: Katja Kraft
Comments
Press
Split
“Taking the skin to market”: Under this title, Flatz is auctioning off his tattoos for a good cause in the Munich Pinakothek der Moderne.
The buyers receive them posthumously.
© Marcus Schlaf
The Munich conceptual artist Flatz is auctioning off his tattoos at the Pinakothek der Moderne.
The buyers receive them after Flatz's death.
A visit.
The bureaucracy is faced with provocation.
So the artist Flatz first changed his will.
And then insure his body.
So that a charity auction can take place on the evening of February 8, 2024 in Munich's Pinakothek der Moderne, which is in fact his next performance.
Perhaps the most radical thing the conceptual artist has undertaken in the past 50 years or so.
Flatz is auctioning off his tattoos.
In the sense of: with skin and hair.
It's written in black and white in his will: If the 71-year-old Munich native dies, his tattoos should be cut out, prepared and presented behind glass.
Whoever gets the contract for one of the tattoos this evening will, in the best case scenario, have to wait a while before receiving the work of art in the artist's interest.
Until the prepared pieces of skin are handed over posthumously, buyers receive full-body photographs with the areas of skin marked as symbolic representatives.
Anticipation is the greatest joy?
Well protected: Flatz and cultural editor Katja Kraft in one of his installations.
© Marcus Schlaf
You can't really imagine who might want to bid here.
The new Flatz exhibition, whose opening will also be celebrated on February 8, 2024, gives a foretaste.
A hyper-realistic copy of the artist's naked body dangles from the ceiling on a meat hook.
The Berlin colleague Lisa Büscher made them to perfection.
Every vein on the hand, every freckle looks as if it was painted by nature itself.
But it also reminds of slaughterhouse, death.
And at the idea that the real Flatz's body will one day lie on the dissection table so that his tattoos can be cut out, disgust and revulsion grow, and horrifying associations arise with lampshades from the National Socialist era - made from the skin of concentration camps. Inmates.
And the question pops up: Why all this?
Flatz has been provoking with his art actions for almost 50 years
Flatz – keyword: conceptual artist – says he has planned it this way his whole life.
His whole body was a canvas that he played on little by little.
Two years ago he had the most recent inscription engraved on his flesh: “Mors certa, hora incerta,” death is certain, the hour uncertain.
“This should be the last tattoo.
The work is complete.” It began publicly in 1979. The 27-year-old Flatz posed naked as a living dartboard.
The spectators were supposed to throw arrows at him, with a reward of 500 marks for a hit.
The eleventh throw hit and wounded the artist and the performance was over.
Or on New Year's Eve 1990, Flatz allowed himself to be hung upside down between two steel plates in Tbilisi, swinging against the metal like a bell clapper - until he fell unconscious in minute five.
Afterwards, the waltz “On the Beautiful Blue Danube” was played, to which a festively dressed couple danced.
What is, what remains?
The series “Palermo/Dandy” (2018) can also be seen in the exhibition at the Pinakothek der Moderne.
© Marcus Schlaf
Aslant?
But hello.
Gimmicky?
Certainly.
And yet again and again: powerful.
Born in Vorarlberg, this provocation on two legs makes us face our own mortality.
To question what remains.
And what is it: What actions do we as a society allow ourselves to be provoked by?
What triggers strong feelings and what triggers just a shrug of the shoulders?
The best example is the poster motif for the current show.
On it is the photograph “Star” with Flatz on crutches, naked.
In 1993, this motif advertised an exhibition in the Gropius Bau.
“It hung all over Berlin back then.
But when the Pinakothek wanted to have the Ströer company put it up in Munich, they stood in the way,” says Flatz.
For youth protection reasons.
“What kind of society do we live in that allows a service provider to censor art by refusing to display it on posters?
We are entering a new Victorianism.
Everything is banned.
That's exactly what the right wants.
Rubens will soon be taken down because he showed naked people!” Flatz has designed an alternative poster.
And will publish the original motif as a signed edition.
“It's always like this: what's forbidden is bought.” He says and grins.
The Flatz exhibition in the Modern Art Collection runs until May 5, 2024;
Opening with auction and music by Flatz, Gutbrod and DJ Hell on February 8, 2024 from 7 p.m.