Caruso / St John

The Feeling of Things
a+t ediciones 13, 1999, p48–51, extrait

There is a group of contemporary artists whose work develops Beuys' attempt to prioritise intuitive forms of intelligence. The work of artists like Katharina Fritsch, Robert Gober, and Juan Muñoz use the human figure and objects from everyday life. But rather than use these forms with any explicitly iconographic intent, as would have been the case in historical figurative art, this work attempts to operate first and foremost at an emotional level. The image in this work, with its associations to childhood, appeals to such commonly held experiences that one forms a strong feeling about the work almost as soon as one sees it. In common with much conceptual sculpture, this work attempts to operates primarily by way of the object, seeking to short-circuit any didactic or literary readings. However, unlike that work of Donald Judd or Richard Serra who claim to eliminate associative readings of their work, the work of these younger artists intentionally contains a surfeit of emotional content, which emerges simultaneously from the image and from the fabric of the artefact.

Why does everything have to come back to concepts? Being disturbed visually, experiencing ambivalence-why does that have to go straight into the language cage? It's just an escape into didacticism. A very important element in my work is that you come in, experience an image, allow yourself to be drawn into it, perceive it directly. 1 K Fritsch

Construction
We are interested in making an architecture that does not rely on language. An architecture whose physical presence has a direct emotional effect.

We think that construction has a direct effect on the emotional character of spaces. Although discourses on construction often centre on issues of performance and technique, ultimately construction is about appearance, about choosing appropriate constructions in the production of space.

Within architecture there is a strong tradition to regard construction as a means to achieve a priori intentions, whether they are compositional, iconographic or ideological. Construction can, however, be considered as a media, simultaneous with form. Ideas of volumetric elaboration or descriptive grids seem impoverished when compared to the material condition of a stacked, log wall or an unpainted lining of skim jointed plasterboard.