The joint work, “Walker” by Albert Oehlen, André Butzer, and Schorsch Kamerun, was first shown in the context of the “Steirischer Herbst” art festival at Galerie Bleich-Rossi in 1999. All three artists participated several times in this Austrian contemporary art festival, which is still considered a pioneering event today. It took place for the first time in the seminal year of 1968 and has placed focus on interdisciplinary exchange ever since.
In the present large work by the three German artists, a bright green, sphinx-like creature leaps through the picture, its New Wave head sporting a wild mane. Epaulettes suggest a cool uniform jacket. A road leads into the distance behind it, and a stage diva reminiscent of the YMCA policeman is kneeling. This work raises questions concerning otherness. This topic is very much in line with the festival of that time and the associated “question of how to deal with the other and the appropriation and exclusion of the minoritarian, the emergence of hybrid identities and the disturbances of the body, the reflection on the work of art as a product of the division of and the conditions of its production,” as the former artistic director Christine Frisinghelli put it (https://archiv.steirischerherbst.at/de/editions/1999, accessed October 18, 2024).

Oehlen, Butzer, and Kamerun all grew up during the punk era and new wave; the “Neue Wilden” (New Wild Ones) coincided with the renewal of figurative art in the Federal Republic of Germany. Here, the three artists reflect on a past that they have personally experienced. While Butzer and Oehlen are primarily known as visual artists, Schorsch Kamerun is best known as the singer of the punk band “Die goldenen Zitronen” and today also works as a director at major theaters such as the Zurich Schauspielhaus and the Munich Kammerspiele. Albert Oehlen is not only considered one of the leading representatives of “post-non-representational painting” but also one of those European artists who, as early as in the early 1980s, were willing to paint pictures that are still considered the basis for everything regarded “worthwhile seeing” in the early 21st century. [EH/AR]