Galerie in Flux ist Galerie in Flux
Die Galerie im Zeitalter ihrer technischen Reproduzierbarkeit!

Ansprache: Hubert Fabian Kulterer, Wien





Copy Art

Im 20. Jahrhundert setzten verschiedene Kunstströmungen auf das Unterbewußte. Unter Ausschaltung der Vernunft sollte sich in der Ecriture automatique, im Informel und Tachismus der innere Zustand spontan und unmittelbar im Kunstwerk niederschlagen. Franz John wendet diesen Ansatz auf die Maschine an. Anstelle des Unterbewußten treten die technischen Bedingungen des Kopierers.
Bernhard Buderath
In: Jazzthetik. 1987




DIE KOPIERTE GALERIE

When Franz John took his „Handy Copymachine" to copy a gallery-space, he not only enshrined himself. By closing all the windows and doors with a copy of their own in the process of performing a piece of art, he not only commented on the context in which we usually perceive art. By using the anarchistic realtime-medium „Handkopierer", he not only produced and reproduced what can no longer be understood as a piece of art, but has to be understood as a tapestry of references, meta-references and meta-meta-references to the „trivial machine": artscene. And all that the perceiving perceiver could see of the „piece" was its deconstruction. Once Franz John had the job done and everything was closed and copied, the gallery was opened again for the public and one day later all that was left neatly packed bundles of copies.
Markus Müller
In: Èsthetiques des Arts Médiatiques, G.R.A.M.. Montréal, 1995




(...)"The Copied Gallery" is an installation/performance Franz John had undertaken at Galerie paranorm, Berlin, in October and November '87. Using a hand-held and battery operated (pocket) photocopier, he painstakingly copied the entire gallery and pasted the resulting strips of xerox back over the surfaces from which they had been generated. The performance ended with the doors that gave access to the gallery being pasted over with strips of xerox. The installation was in this way 'completed' in a manner which made it impossible for the work to be viewed in a 'resolved' state (since a part of the work woutd be 'destroyed' by anyone entering the gallery). (...)
Stewart Home
In: Plagiarism. London, 1989