New Viewings #44

Christian Kölbl goes one step further. He is offering a „Liberator“ gun in four design variants and as a limited edition, but above all with his own name on it. This is printed in large letters on the gun’s case, turning it into a luxury product. The guns are produced with a 3D printer according to plans freely available on the Internet, not unlike many weapons that are nowadays used by preppers, right-wing extremists and other fanatics, bypassing all laws. So in Kölbl’s case, these highly controversial weapons are now certified with the aura of art, which makes them all the more sinister. For does this not transfigure the aggressive catastrophic longing of those who otherwise use them into a heroic worldview and prophecy? But it is not only those who enjoy frivolity who are likely to be addressed by this; rather, Kölbl’s multiples also allow us to think in terms of large historical arcs and to associate Renaissance artists such as Leonardo da Vinci and Albrecht Dürer, who for their part designed weapons and fortifications.

The walls of the exhibition space read „Buy your gun.“ The suggestion is that in the future everyone will need a gun – that this is part of a contemporary, even decent lifestyle. And once weapons are just as much a matter of fashions and hypes as music, clothing and accessories, then new markets will open up all the time, and highly dynamic consumer cycles will emerge here as well. Christian Kölbl’s work makes us aware that in the course of marketable staging, even war and violence – the business of killing – are no longer something remote and questionable. Rather, what is aestheticized is also normalized.

Christian Kölbl, born 1994, lives in Berlin. Studied at the Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig with Michael Riedel and at the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main with Tobias Rehberger. Director of the space project „CK-Offspace“ and „Schönwalder Strasse 44“ and co-founder of the collectives „Tannhäuser Kreis“ and „Capitalist Surrealists“.

Pia vom Ende deliberately leaves it unclear exactly who the service providers are. On smartphone displays, they are only depicted in schematized form, namely as emojis, whose cute design is, however, in turn capable of generating emotional warmth. However, the cheerful appearance of the displays also obscures the assumptions on which this business idea is based and what it implies. In fact, it involves a double imposition: Those who need money and therefore have to donate warmth cannot choose whose proximity they get, and those who are cold and know no other way to get warmth have to reckon with the fact that the warmth donor may smell bad, be abusive or infectious.

But since Pia vom Ende presents the displays in the form of painted pictures, it remains open whether this business idea is really designed to be implemented. Perhaps it remains a dystopian artist’s fantasy that explores how far people would go in a crisis situation, indeed what degradations they would accept. The fact that there are large packages in the exhibition space, however, suggests that the idea is meant quite seriously. Shouldn’t they contain the ordered human warmth dispensers packed for shipment? But doesn’t this make them a commodity once and for all? Will unboxing videos be circulating online next winter, showing customers curiously unpacking their warmers?

Pia vom Ende, born 1990, lives in Berlin. Studied at the Burg Giebichenstein Academy of Art Halle/S. and the Berlin Weißensee Academy of Art; 2021 master student of Tilo Baumgärtel. Founder of the project space Schönwalder Straße 44 in Berlin.