Wenn du nicht in der Nähe bist / If you are not near, 1997, L.E.O.
This work is hard to qualify – is it an information, a warning or an attack on the public? When you look at this work from a distance everything looks somehow very clear. The text on the canvas: “my painting smells the best”, the bubblegum-colored cloud, the pleasant atmosphere. The viewer automatically begins to get closer to the canvas, wanting to smell the the painting and read the title and find out more about the work. But by getting closer non of this happens. The viewers cannot smell anything, and when they read the title of the work “If you are not near” they become confused. The work refuses the presence and the closeness of the viewer. For the viewer the meaning of this (My painting smells the best – If you are not near) isn’t understandable.
This work moves the viewer to perform. First, it brings him close and then it rejects him. It plays with the feelings of the viewer. It offends him directly.
Through this kind of behavior the painting looses its conventional significance, but in another way it gets to something different from what we know as a painting.