Adoration Scene: Paintings of Robert Janitz with a work by Jutta Koether

Curated by Amanda Trager

The work of two self-exiled German artists, Robert Janitz and Jutta Koether, is presented in an installation referencing a
Buddhist shrine. A small painting by Koether hangs prominently in the gallery: it is the only piece on the wall. Paintings
by Janitz “prostrate” themselves before this central icon: some lying flat on the floor, others propped up precariously
facing Koether’s lone painting like humble supplicants. The exhibition’s tableau raises questions about the problems
and possibilities in the dynamic of influence between artists and how this relates to the current absence of a functioning
pedagogical model in the art world.

The proposed painting installation looks at the relationship between two particular artists from the same generation and
culture in order to set into motion a consideration of this dilemma of influence. Although this exhibition uses painting, it is
not about painting—their power or value is not denied, but neither is it the point.

With the current professionalization of the art career and the depersonalized, trend-based nature of an arts education
where artists are “taught” how to assemble a proper collection of influences (from a pre-screened list of Canonized
Dead), artists, particularly older artists and those coming to art through unconventional or non-institutional avenues, face
particular challenges when it comes to developments or changes in their work. What does it mean at this point for an artist
to be influenced by another? A tradition of apprenticeship spanning medieval guilds to artist-led schools of Modernism
(i.e., the Studio School of Hans Hoffman) provided a place to learn craft and work through influences for centuries.
With Postmodernism this model came to be seen as suspect for reinforcing hegemonic and reactionary hierarchies. No
satisfactory substitute, however, currently exists to address the crisis in pedagogy that has since emerged.

Robert Janitz and Jutta Koether met three years ago after a performance of hers at The Kitchen. They continued to meet by
plan and by chance in New York, Paris and Cologne. Koether visited Janitz’s studio in March of 2008. A bit of background is
necessary to understand the suitability of their particular work to this proposition. Janitz left Germany in the 90s and settled
in Paris. His work has begun to be a presence there and in France generally. Interestingly, he is currently being represented
by a gallery that focuses on French artists, many from the “Support/Surface” movement. He has only recently been exploring
the art world in New York. His path as an artist has been somewhat circuitous; augmented by, but also in some ways
subordinated to, an intense involvement with Buddhism through the 80s and 90s. Regularly questioning his creative process
has allowed him to distance himself to a certain extent from painting and, recently, make forays into a performance-based
practice that incorporates this questioning.

Buddhism offers a stark contrast to current “Where’s the Beef?” forms of MFA education. Practitioners, in pursuit of inner
realization, learn to meditate as a means to look at the nature of mind (one’s own mind, all minds), awaken compassion that
then leads to good works, and study with a teacher, who guides the student on the path through example and direct teaching.
As straightforward as this ancient practice might seem at first, a further look reveals its profound elasticity in subsuming
all manner of seeming paradox and contradiction. This is what I find most compelling about Buddhism as an “outsider”.
An example would be Janitz’ controversial teacher Trungpa Rinpoche; highly revered yet known for extreme alcoholic
behavior, he was partially paralyzed from a car crash while under the influence. (Like a Borscht-belt Zen koan, he drove
his sports car into a joke shop in Scotland). Significantly, Trungpa was unapologetic about his drinking. A student tellingly
related: “Suzuki [Roshi] asked Trungpa to give a talk to the students in the zendo. Trungpa walked in tipsy and sat on the
edge of the altar platform with his feet dangling. But he delivered a crystal-clear talk, which some felt had a quality—like
Suzuki’s talks—of not only being about the dharma but being itself the dharma.” He actively discouraged his students
from imitating his own behavior. A disciple of his once said: “You shouldn’t imitate or judge the behavior of your teacher,
Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, unless you can imitate his mind.”

Janitz says of his study with Trungpa: Trungpa attracted me because of the elegance and wildness. You could bring your
wild mind along and felt accommodated and put on the spot too. The conventional night out drinking, for example, became
a mindfulness event where concepts are ‘intoxicated’ and set out of order. The little world of ‘me’ crumbles like a house
of cards, and celebration takes place: appreciation of movement in space, movement and stillness. You discover that what
you think you are is for the most part a lot of different but familiar thought-streams and that THAT is not all there is. First

Amanda Trager 678 Hart Street, Brooklyn, NY 11221 (718) 624-0691 amandatrager@hotmail.com
thought, best thought, jump the gun, not afraid to be a fool… and it makes sense not just intellectually but in your whole
being… It was hard work— the meditation, kitchen shifts, claustrophobia with people etc., and lots of fun time. That feeling
is still there now that I tap into it. I often feel dry and functional in comparison today.

Unlike Janitz, Jutta Koether was decisively part of the art scene from early on. Shortly after getting out of school, she
acquired a reputation as feminist provocateur to Martin Kippenberger, Sigmar Polke and Albert Oehlen in Cologne. She
came to New York and quickly established herself as a painter with several solo shows at the Pat Hearn gallery between
1991 and 1999. More recently, she has come to be held in extremely high regard as an artist of central, if enigmatic,
importance, known for creating an uncommonly open context or arena for her painting (and by extension, painting itself)
that involves installation, video, literature, criticism and music (including collaborations with Kim Gordon and Tom
Verlaine). Like Joseph Beuys, severely-styled self-presentation and performance is part of this context. She works with
art collectives like Reena Spaulings and the recently defunct Orchard gallery. This myriad of activities seems always to
circle back around to her painting. By decentralizing her focus and eschewing formalist strategies within painting or logical
continuity or synthesis between her various disciplines, Koether forces the viewer to apprehend her work with the same
lack of assumptions with which she makes it.

The suitability of the proposed shrine arrangement whereby paintings become performing subjects is particularly well
conveyed in fragmented excerpts from an Artforum article on Koether’s work: “Koether’s paintings were (and are) subtly
biographical… Sometimes, in fact, her paintings seem almost to behave like people, calling out to us… Koether wrote that
a painting, like a person, makes an ‘appearance,’ ‘bare and alone.’ The work puts itself at our mercy, subject to the public
gaze and forced to endure it… She pushes her paintings uncannily toward subjecthood—presenting them theatrically, so they
obtain the air of living persons…”

If Janitz were looking for a new guru, Jutta Koether would be an ideal candidate. Like his former Buddhist teacher, she is
very much about a way of being and presents a model for peeling the onion that is painting—that is mind—in order to find
a place where painting can exist and where one’s “self’ can exist. It must also undoubtedly be attractive to Janitz that she
brings a host of seemingly unrelated activities to bear upon the practice of painting in order to revalidate its connection to
authenticity, spirituality and belief—albeit in a manner that valorizes inauthenticity, punk attitude and disbelief. Janitz’s
becoming Koether’s disciple would be a way to breathe Post-modern life into a model rejected as patriarchal (not only is
Koether female she is only slightly older than Janitz) and also provide an authoritative thesis for this exhibition.

However convenient this might be for me as curator, it is not, in fact, the case. Janitz is not looking for a new guru and
recently wrote: “I’m not really influenced by Koether. I respect her. Also I feel a kinship to her quest, though my stuff is
formally different. Her being difficult and enigmatic to me is also something I respond to.”

All of which brings us back to thge original question: What does it mean at this point for an artist to be influenced by
another? What options exist for older artists undergoing creative change who are working outside of an institution? The
answer might be found in friendship—specifically, friendships between artists that are strong enough and caring enough
to handle truly candid exchange. So, as a curator, friend and fellow-artist, my advice to Robert is to develop tendencies
already latent in his practice: to seriously consider all aspects of Jutta’s position(s)—specifically, the way she contextualizes
her painting to undercut its pre-eminence in the tired hierarchy of marketable art objects; to not disappear into a French
context or identity, but to “bring your wild mind along,” as a German, perhaps, or as an outsider, or just as an invested,
vulnerable, exposed human being. Koether offers a subtle but courageous model for parsing and calibrating the many
means and meanings of exposure.

Notwithstanding what I consider to be the value of these bits of advice, the broader aim of this exhibition is to make
manifest a personal case-study of solidarity and pedagogical exchange between artists within the context of curatorial
practice and as content for an exhibition. In other words, this exhibition is as much about my relationship with Janitz as it is
about his relationship with Koether. The format of the show’s presentation walks a fine line between satirizing the hierarchy
that exists between artists of differing levels of success—and indeed, that would be a valid, though cynical reading of the
show. I mean to include it into the mix of possible interpretations, but only to underline the very real challenges facing
artists today in forging relationships between one another that are substantive, honest and truly productive in helping work
realize its greatest potential.

Amanda Trager 678 Hart Street, Brooklyn, NY 11221 (718) 624-0691 amandatrager@hotmail.com
Jutta Koether’s painting

Robert Janitz’ paintings

Sketch of
proposal installation

Jutta Koether

Die Fahigkeit Des Imaginaren

Sich Selbst Zu Zerlegen, 2008

acrylic, tacks, red wool thread

on canvas

20 x 20 inches

Amanda Trager 678 Hart Street, Brooklyn, NY 11221 (718) 624-0691 amandatrager@hotmail.com