Calendar

opening hours:
Wed.-Sat: 1-6 pm and by appointment

Venue:
Potemka Contemporary Art
Aurelienstraße 41
04177 Leipzig
www.potemka.de/

The non-specialness of everyday pain

There is a Google review in which a visitor writes about Galerie Potemka that it shows non-conformist art from Leipzig and non-conformist international art. The majority of the population has to adapt, which is why it is exciting to receive impulses from Künstlerinnen, who can supposedly go through life without a corset. Bye the way, most artists adapt anyway: they prefer to remain silent on difficult topics such as metoo, anti-Semitism, etc., which could cause offense in the scene. Even in the works themselves, there are often adaptations, such as the endless loop of the self-quotation. Why they adapt would be the subject of a cultural sociology study; perhaps the idea behind this is to achieve monetary security through adaptation or to achieve membership of certain groups within art. But there are also non-conformist artists, so-called "artist-artists". Alexander Lang, for example, is a gifted draughtsman and graphic artist on the one hand and yet works empirically (the term comes from Dr. Konstanze Caysa). For example, he incorporates experiments with the body into the art process and experiments with nomadism, or uses models from Art Brut. The title of the exhibition also comes from the field of Art Brut.

Stephan Kopiczinski is primarily showing sculptures cast from existing molten materials. However, it is not only the topic of sustainable materials (art) that plays a role for him, but also the topic of adaptation vs. individuality. When I wanted to ask him about his current work, he handed me his diploma thesis and said: "It's all in there." It is an entertaining, biographical work in which he reflects on himself, art and society. I chose a passage that could be explanatory for the motif of the flyer (the photo will not be hanging in the exhibition, by the way). Stephan Kopiczinski writes:
I escaped unemployment by doing community service and then slipped into a career as a civil servant. That happened ... thanks to my father's well-intentioned but damaging care. He himself, having escaped from his father's strictness and rural simplicity into the civil service, thought it would be a good idea for his son to follow in his footsteps. I did it, continued to take drugs and found myself in a gray area where I spent three long years of my life rotting away. I was rotting mentally and physically. ... and, along the way, experienced what it felt like to be locked into the political system ... My experiences from that time in particular make me truly empathize with the everyday pain of the hard and unfortunately often pointless working population even today. ... I don't want to say that this is a special gift, we give ourselves gifts, but it is precisely in this non-specialness of everyday pain that its specialness lies. It has become so habitual that it is barely noticeable. For many, suppressed pain is the healthy norm. The compensation is the ability to consume. It is part of good manners and determines one's reputation and social status. People allow themselves to be exploited so that they are not excluded from the larger group by not consuming.

(S. Kopiczinski: So denke ich schon heute nicht mehr, Leipzig 2017, S. 13).