Joachim Bosse. With a Text by Anika Meier
Sometimes, I also write texts for artists. Joachim Bosse, the German conceptual artist, is one of the artists I write texts for. He is about to present his fourth exhibition project we've been working on together. This is also a good moment to show the progress in his work by publishing all four texts one after the other.
Ad Memoriam, 2023
I love McDonald's. That's not a sentence to make friends with. Not in Berlin. And not in New York, where I am right now. In New York, I was told at length that the quality of the food was not that good at McDonald's. In order not to prolong the conversation any further, I nodded understandingly. Of course, I don't go to McDonald's because of the good quality of the food. McDonald's is childhood and memories: Sundays with family and nights out with friends, happy meals and cheeseburgers, sticky food and ice-cold drinks. Everything was fine back then – at least in our own little world.
A lot has happened since then. We don't eat unhealthy burgers at McDonald's, but healthy burgers at... – insert the name of the vegan burger restaurant of your choice. McDonald's might fall under pop culture, but pop culture isn't what it used to be either. There is no longer the band that everyone agrees or disagrees on that dominates the charts. The family no longer sits together in front of the television in the evening and watches a program interrupted by commercials. Spotify, Netflix, TikTok – everyone puts together their own program, looks at a device alone, and lives as they see fit and important for themselves.
With his solo exhibition "Ad Memoriam", Joachim Bosse is writing a postcard to the past and sending his best regards. With six monumental wall works, he is reminiscent of old cityscapes full of neon signs, symbols of capitalism: McDonald's, Shell, Nestlé, Western Union, Deutsche Bank, and Thyssen Krupp. What remains if sales move on? What remains when everyone goes online? In Bosse's work, nothing glows, nothing flashes, no neon and no light. He calls his works between painting and sculpture, which appear to be crumbling, "capitalist cave paintings". Are the neon signs dusty or dirty? Have the gray gentlemen from Michael Ende's novel "Momo" passed by? Have we been cheated of our time to save time and forget to live in the now? Where is now, when programs and conversations are running in parallel on smartphones, tablets, and laptops and the attention is never quite there? Does the analogue world gather dust while the digital world flashes on the smartphone?
Bosse reminds us that we need to remember to find ways of togetherness in the post-digital world. Memories are beautiful, but they are also painful and sometimes healing. Like Bosse's works, which evoke the feeling of nostalgia.
For Sale, 2023
Let's be honest: Art is about prices and selling. About visitor numbers and queuing. About wanting to see and have. About hype and records. A glance at the newspaper is enough for confirmation. An auction record here, an auction record there. $45 million. $40 million. £37 million. And now incomprehensibly high sums are being paid for digital files. $69 million. $92 million. But: Without art, no sales. Therefore, art is first and foremost about art. About concept and communication. About art history and context.
The German conceptual artist Joachim Bosse fetishizes the sale in his solo exhibition "For Sale", as the title suggests, both matter-of-factly and sensationally. The exhibition consists of 15 light boxes in white, red and yellow and a promotional film featuring rapper Massiv, actor Wilson Gonzales and reality star Kader Loth – as befits a sales exhibition. There's Sale, Sale, Sale and percentages. Special offer, thumbs up. New and for rent. Buy 1, get 1 free. "For Sale" is consumption and capitalism, product and promotion.
Bosse comes from advertising. Now he's literally advertising the sale with his art and giving the buyer instructions as in a supermarket or department store. Percentages. Get the percentages. Sale, Sale, Sale. Negotiate and buy. New. Strike now. The negotiating and striking is part of the concept. There's not enough for everyone.
When it's always Sale – a look at shopping streets and the supermarket is enough for confirmation – Sale is a mindset. This also applies to Bosse's art. He not only comes from advertising, but also from artists who come from advertising and have created icons like Warhol with the soup cans. Bosse doesn't even create an icon, namely the SALE and its design, he appropriates the icon and conceptually declines it.
In a society that jumps back and forth between exclamation marks and question marks, art in Bosse's work is decisive and says itself what it offers. The sale of the sale. Special offer!
Diktat, 2023
I don't know how you feel when you hear the word dictation. When I hear the word dictation, I get a slightly queasy feeling in my stomach. It throws me back to school days, to the playground and the classroom. Getting up early in the morning. Being attentive all day. Dictations and tests. Grades and report cards.
How do we feel today when we open apps on our smartphones and browsers on our laptops? Attention is demanded from morning to night. Just don't post the wrong thing. It's like being in the schoolyard and classroom: ratings, popularity, concern.
About 33.4 million people in Germany use the internet several times a day. Around 12.7 million even almost all the time.
What does our daily life on the internet look like? Berlin-based conceptual artist Joachim Bosse subjects himself to the stress test on the web surrounded by 24 monitors in his exhibition "Diktat." 24 hours of constant fire. From getting up to going to bed. A day in the life of a user. Attention. Excitement. Friends. Followers. Notifications.
Bosse takes notes. For a day and a night. The algorithm determines life. Bosse puts the cacophony of everyday life on the web to paper, as if it were a test to pass. He documents, dissects, and reassembles the content that rains down on him.
He allows himself to be targeted and fully surrenders to the content compiled for him. TikTok, Instagram, X, YouTube, Spiegel, Pornhub, Google. "Edeka loves food". "22 tips and ideas to get rich". "Germany is becoming increasingly right-wing". "Lonely housewives in your area want to be f*****". And thousands of other messages rain down on him and become a collage of the present in the post-digital age.
This creates a passive portrait of the artist. A chronicle of the times. A dictation of society.
And all of this in beautiful handwriting.
Reviewed by Elke Buhr, Editor-in-chief, Monopol.
Duty Free, 2024
… but first, save lives
Joachim Bosse is getting serious. Gone are the days of nostalgic reveling in the past and feeling good about consumption. He has found love and has come to inner peace. But the world around him is in turmoil, it's a time of tumult. And something is at stake. For Bosse. For you. For all of us. Attention and empathy can save society and lives.
At Tegel Airport, the German conceptual artist Joachim Bosse presents thirteen large-format paintings exclusively for one evening. With his new cycle of works IN CASE OF, he becomes contemplative. He reads the signs of the times. "Humanity seems to be prepared for everything. Except for itself," he says. Bosse has traveled a lot, he has spent time in the big city and in nature. As an attentive observer, he has encountered seemingly naive graphics on signs everywhere that accompany people through life and constantly prepare them for the worst: catastrophe. Forest fires, shark attacks, plane crashes, floods, and much more.
Bosse has now done what one should never do: He pocketed the flight safety graphics on the plane. Back home, he meticulously and accurately transferred the flight safety graphics onto canvas in color.
For Bosse, the flight is a metaphor for order, orientation, and structure in the face of catastrophe. With each flight, there seems to be a threat of crashing from the highest heights to the deepest depths. In her novel "Outline," Rachel Cusk wonders why passengers don't flee while the plane is still on the ground. Because on every flight, we are reminded of how quickly everything can be over and how important it is to be informed and prepared, to listen and to act. When danger threatens, it threatens everyone. A life-threatening event knows no class distinctions. Flight attendants warn on every flight to think of yourself first, so that you are even able to help others. Without oxygen, no energy. And so it is everywhere outside of airplanes.
We can make it. Together. Into the boats and row.
Thanks!