VIENNA.- From February 2015, mumok is showing a solo exhibition by the German artist David Lieske (born 1979 in Hamburg). Entitled Platoon (RL-X), this exhibition addresses the close connection between legend and work and between the person and the product of the artist. It is the central premise of this exhibition that the artist and the work stand in a complex relationship to each other, and that today the borders between art and work are fluid. The exhibition focuses on Lieske’s autobiography in book form, I tried to make this work, in which he tells the story of his life in an idealized retrospective. The text is based on conversations over several weeks recorded by the author Ingo Niermann and was translated into English by Michael Ladner. The book will be presented in an edition of 300 copies, as an autobiographical sketch that can only be read on site, and under heightened security, relating to the specific conditions of its commission and production and also its connection to a specific location and situation.

As already in his earlier conceptual works, photographs, films, and spatial installations, the artist here too looks at the shifting potentials of the production and distribution of art. Statistically, museum visitors devote just three seconds on average to the contemplation of a work of art. By way of compensation for his own self-divestiture and the effort that was required to write the story of his life, the first-person narrator Lieske now demands more commitment from his audience, more than they can even offer during a whole day in the museum. This means that the impression that exhibition visitors gain of the artistic or artificial figure of himself that Lieske presents in his book can at best be just as fragmentary and subjective as the narrator’s own version of his life.

The book is presented in a setting of munitions boxes, camouflage nets, and other paramilitary objects, so that the author suggests that his life has to be tactically conquered. Beholders and readers are invited to take hold of it and occupy it.

In the course of describing his own life, Lieske also presents the social network within which he operates. Together with Peter Kersten he is a co-founder of the record lable Dial Records, and manager at the Mathew Gallery.

From his extended circle of friends, he has invited the Villa Design Group, which is represented by his gallery, to create a parallel architectural intervention within the mumok Ludwig Goes Pop exhibition, which also opens on February 11, 2015. On Level 3 of the museum, they will set up their Bernard Natan Centre for the Arts, with a direct view of Claes Oldenburg’s Mouse Museum (1960–1977) and Ray Gun Wing (1961–1977), pursuing a museum master plan that is just as spectacular as Oldenburg’s major works. By extending into this exhibition, Lieske’s show demonstrates the afterlife and ubiquitous role of Pop Art in contemporary art.