OFLUXO

Schöngeist – Zeitgeist – Poltergeist – this is the cumulative title of the exhibition by Berlin artist Tobi Keck at Kunsthalle.Ost in Leipzig, which opens on 28/10/2022.
The artist has developed an installation tailored to the space for the exhibition. In addition to the continuation of his food-based interventions, a conglomerate of more than 200 monster masks will be on display. In the exhibition space, there will be a juxtaposition of the masks with a lettering created from kohlrabi waste, which refers to a quote by American actor Jim Carrey in his role as animal detective Ace Ventura. In addition, there are manipulated organic waste bags in the space, filled with vegetable waste, which function as a component of the installation and also as an edition. In addition to the visual, the space will also expand over the course of the exhibition to include an olfactory level related to the rotting process of the organic materials.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a text by the Dresden art historian Dr. phil. Teresa Ende and an edition. The exhibition poster was designed by K.O.T.Z. Collective member Don Elektro.

— Teresa Ende

Dis/Simulatio artis
Schöngeist Zeitgeist Poltergeist by Tobi Keck

Alrighty then. The famous mantra of the film detective Ace Ventura – just as effective for bridging unpleasant pauses in conversation as it is for ending them – is emblazoned on the right wall of the exhibition Schöngeist Zeitgeist Poltergeist as monumental lettering made of turnip cabbage and cauliflower leaves. What is a catchphrase, phraseologism and paradoxical commentary on the world in the work of US star comedian Jim Carrey is given a further spin in the three-part show of works by Berlin artist Tobi Keck (*1987). For although the phrase, modelled in the artist’s handwriting, is attached to the final exhibition wall with blackened steel nails, it functions less as a closing point than as a door opener that points both forwards and backwards, outwards and inwards.

Eye mask, black crow, devil and zombie. The show opens with the Untitled collection of dozens of scary masks mounted on the left wall of the exhibition space. Tobi Keck has collected the masks – all of them industrial mass-produced goods – in discounters and supermarkets over the past year. Their accumulation, multiplication and arrangement in the exhibition turns the effect of the source material on its head: aura and creepiness can only be had in the singular. A wall-filling register of scary masks, on the other hand, does not generate fear but a grotesque-absurd monstrosity in which the as-if game of disguise in its simultaneity of pleasure, hiding, showing and coming to terms with reality collides with the banal commodity aesthetic of the trashy objects.

The lettering and the collection of masks are connected in form and content by the Dumbsters placed on the floor. These consist of perforated paper bags, which are provided with minimalist screen prints and in turn filled with cauliflower and turnip cabbage leaves. Together with the holes punched in pairs, the screen prints on each bag create a different upside-down emoticon. In the process, the pictorial symbols created solely by means of a computer keyboard, which stand for expressions of emotion such as joy, sadness or surprise, are transferred into three-dimensionality, subjectified and quasi brought to life.

This work is also based on the programmatic alienation and reinterpretation of what is found, on a simultaneity of concealing and showing: The pictograms are upside down and yet appear “right side up” because the vegetable herb protruding from the openings of the bags is reminiscent of wildly sprouting hair (and how this will change its colour and structure over time). The bag objects themselves are both rudimentary masks with eye holes and fantastic turnip heads – and nonetheless nothing but mere trash: data waste on a waste paper rubbish bag filled with organic waste.

With Schöngeist Zeitgeist Poltergeist, Tobi Keck reflects our present as cleverly, subtly and humorously as his own pop cultural imprint. Entertainment meets reality distortion meets dissimulated ignorance meets the irony of profound imposture and foreshortening. What doesn’t make sense logically can still express truth, and vice versa. Alrighty then.

— Translation by Kunsthalle.Ost