Thierry Geoffroy/Colonel: Biennalist

Thierry Geoffroy takes biennales seriously. When a big international exhibition opens under a discursive-poetic title that is supposed to convey its relation to politics and life, this is only rarely to be seen as a guideline and only sometimes as a correct description of the exhibited art. The “Biennalist,” however, refuses to take these empty words with the appropriate ironic distance: with only the seeming naivety of an Inspector Columbo, he prefers to ask time and again what really lies behind this or that claim, the one or the other decision of a curator. For just as ambitious titles and press releases often conceal conceptual weaknesses or half-heartedness with regards to the content of an exhibition, behind the exhibition itself stand financial or political interests that are hardly compatible with the critical claims of the artistic actors. Taking biennials seriously leads inevitably to an alienation effect that can just as well debouch in slapstick as in satire. For his actions at biennials, Geoffroy has developed various humorous and critical formats that include both the public and those participating in the exhibitions. The Global Contemporary at the ZKM | Karlsruhe presents previous projects of the “Biennalist” in the form of a retrospective and, at the same time, a new production for the exhibition is realized at the “Headquarters”, where new actions for a biennial which is taking place in autumn 2011 are planned. (JB)