[Anselm Franke]: Julian Rosefeldt's works
investigate the rituals, structures and absurdities of everyday life; they testify
to a distanced, rationalising view, and to an exact gift of observation that
has an affinity with the objective methods of the natural sciences. His investigation,
which takes place and is comprehensible in the works themselves, consists of
logically articulating unconscious and familiar stereotypes of everyday life
and pursuing them to their logical conclusion. The result of this rationalising
investigation is subdivided into two categories of content: in the one, Rosefeldt
uncovers elements of nonsense and absurdity in the logical processes of everyday
life – he discovers the irrational in the rational; in the other, he designs
the opposing scenario. He stresses the serial, machine-like and automatic nature
of authentic, irrational human expression. At the centre of his work, therefore,
stands the paradoxical image of society as an organic machine.
[Anselm Franke,
Trilogie des Scheiterns, Kunst-Werke Berlin e.V. Institute for Contemporary
Art 2004]
