"Road Trip Through American Counter-culture"
The
Press on Freeway Balconies
In the
exhibition "Freeway Balconies" at the Deutsche Guggenheim, Collier Schorr
presents her own personal selection of works from the current American
scene. The show focuses on positions that examine themes such as
performance, representation, and appropriation. The artist-curator
combines a number of her own works with the works of stars like Richard
Prince and Bruce
Nauman as well as many newcomers. At the same time, "Freeway
Balconies" paints a disturbing portrait of American society and an
evocative self-portrait of Collier Schorr herself. The exhibition
experiment at the Deutsche Guggenheim proved convincing to the critics.
"Right
now, probably the most brilliant expert on pop cultural performances in
identity"-this is how Eva Karcher characterizes the American artist Collier
Schorr, whom she has dedicated a two-page portrait to in the Süddeutsche
Zeitung. "Schorr conceives identity as something borrowed, something
that one appropriates and stages, as though in a performance." "Schorr's
analytical genius lies in her translations of the increasingly complicated
relationship between image and identity. In the era of YouTube,
identity is no longer a consistent factor." In his preview of the show for Monopol,
Daniel Völzke describes the artist's strategy: "Schorr dressed young
German friends in uniforms of the SS or the Bundeswehr, or in fantasy
uniforms. On another occasion, she asked a boy to assume 'feminine' poses
(…) the tension between the photographer and her model are palpable in the
images, which evoke an atmosphere of possibility and the fleeting nature
of identity and certainty."
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The subversive aspect in Collier Schorr's work is also
reflected in her selection for Freeway
Balconies. For instance, Claudia Funke of the taz writes:
"Parody, distortion, and irony, poses and costumes are the means
implemented both in the private and public context. The artists of the
show use these means to question social norms and to facilitate new ways
of seeing things that seem given, giving rise to a political dimension."
For Tim Ackermann of the Welt am Sonntag, the exhibition by the
"hippest photographer to date" is like a "road trip through American
counter-culture." And for Jens Hinrichsen of the Tagesspiegel,
the show reveals the "brittle identities of a superpower at war." In their
review Nicole Büsing and Heiko Klaas of the Berliner Morgenpost
stress the critical image of America conveyed by the broad group
exhibition. Schorr portrays "her country as a land of inner turmoil caught
in a deep identity crisis."
"Wonderfully untidy" is how
Christiane Meixner of Zitty describes the show, which to her mind
centers chiefly around "prescribed identity and rebellious revolt." For
Meixner, it is "a curatorial attempt that is both subjective and
well-done." "A show as self-portrait?" Elfi Kreis of the Kunstzeitung
asks whether this experiment can succeed and concludes that it can, "if
the curator hands the scepter over to the artist." But the "complex
stories" the exhibition tells "can't be simply consumed. 'Freeway
Balconies' consists of a web of intertwined avenues of thought, and it's
well worth the viewer's effort to untangle them." And in art,
Elke Buhr sums up her impression of the artist curator's "radically
subjective selection": "Schorr combines the young generation with the
classics and makes the group show at the Deutsche Guggenheim into a true
gesamtkunstwerk."
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