Author: Tina Schulz
Jirka Pfahl »ausderkunst<
Reihe A4 Band 5
ISBN 3-936826-27-7
gutleut-verlag, Frankfurt/ Main und Weimar

Hunter and The Hunted

A: Hunting the Great Bear
Art is a bear whose shimmering coat lures many hunters out into the arena.
Of course, this is no ordinary bear ? although no hunter can surely claim
that he shot it, its skin having been torn apart a thousand times before
already. But the strange animal remains vivacious, continuing to prowl
around, seeking to expand its territory and to deceive those chasing it.
Within the field of art, artists, communicators, critics and consumers flock
round the bear. Once driven by passion, all of them sooner or later want to
possess (some part of) the bear ? almost at whichever price. Hunting
techniques range from taming, trapping to the free hunt, and alongside all
the conjurers, thieves and hunters you also get the occasional poacher.
Involved thus far, moral objections against disreputable behaviour become
accessory: "If there is something to steal, then I steal it", Pablo Picasso
is known to have said. And Francis Picabia similarly makes no secret of his
dubious methods, "lying, lying and cheating, but not trying to make personal
gain". Lying, cheating and stealing ? and never to one's own advantage? I
using the material that belongs to one's own artistic territory, conscious
transgression as well as constant self-assertion as an artist are equally
important. Anything may become the object of desire: a work of art, an
everyday utensil, a technique, a language game, a method, a context, an
idea or an attitude. Ultimately, Marcel Duchamp ? more the collector of
coincidences and temporal periods than the hunter of momentary innovation
? may be seen as the tortoise relaxedly calling over to the hare,
"I'm already here!" Duchamp's both phenomenal and fundamental lightning
attack marks to this day the outermost point of the territory under
discussion. However, around this point, the boundaries are endlessly
expanding and nobody has caught sight of the great bear in a long time.
The title of a work by Jirka Pfahl, "Chasing the Solo Exhibition", already
reveals him as a hunter. Interpreting the title, it seems that the hunt is
on for the royal stag of the art world ? the solo exhibition, or even
better, the retrospective, in which the artist's oeuvre is displayed in
dimensions befitting the museum, archiving him as the dominant stag within
his métier. Jirka Pfahl's work comprises three photographs of his own face,
as he successively aligns his sights, aims and fires. On two pictures one
sees the artist taking his bearings on the eye of the camera past his hand
raised vertically between his eyes. The third photograph shows him pointing
both forefingers aggressively at the lens, and by extension, at the viewer
standing in front of the picture. As his handscover more than one third of
his face ? making it harder to identify the depicted person ? the
photographer's 'shot' shoots back at the viewer like a ricocheting bullet.
Even if the work's title claims that the artist is hunting for the solo
exhibition, he is far from being prepared to risk his neck. Or is the short,
exclusive moment in which eyes meet and the viewer's attention is focused
solely on the artist's picture, the bag itself?

B: Reading Trails, Laying Tracks
In many of Jirka Pfahl's works there is a constant shift of position from
hunter to hunted, from subject to object. This may be read as a means of
expanding one's territory, i.e. scope of action, a widespread strategy in
the roundabout of the art world over recent decades. Single authorship has
dissolved in favour of multiple fissions: the artist is no longer just an
artist, but also theorist, communicator, critic and consumer. Subjectivity
is accessible in new, project-based contexts of changing function. The
disintegration of the subject as stable ? expressed today as an omnipresent
effect of postmodernism ? may already be found in 19th century philosophy:
The realization that it is impossible to firmly define a stable standpoint
by referring to the self soon became the wavering 'fixed point' of the
Romantic ideal, and at the same time the starting point of modern
subjectivism and self-analysis. Art is like subjectivity: "(...) both ?
subjectivity and art ? have a decisive trait in common. There is no given
ground within art and subjectivity. On the contrary, they constantly
communicate via themselves, revealing signs of that strangely casual
compulsion of modernism ? thematizing themselves through the analysis of
their linguistic means and conditions."
This is very much reflected in Jirka Pfahl's work. The series
"possible works" and the exhibition project "Sold" examine the concept of
authorship in a state of disintegration. Jirka Pfahl does not shy away from
the bold style of the demonstrative epigone ("possible works #1 after Joseph
Kosuth", 2003), nor from deluding the viewer by means of false artistic
identity ("Sold", gallery project, since May 2003). Artistic strategies of
appropriation, quoting and faking ? present in the artist's repertoire
? subvert the already stated and its implications through faithful
repetition, or slight alteration of the original, bringing to the fore the
modalities and conditions of each  respective context. Jirka Pfahl deploys
the principle of appropriation both on the level of the work as well as
artistic stance. He is keen to cross territorial boundaries and is
occasionally an avid poacher. The heterogeneity resulting from this changing
position ? both in terms of style and stance ? can be interpreted as a
reaction to the circumstances of the art market: "You will never get me",
the artist seems to be wanting to tell us. 

C: How to Throw Someone off the Scent by Pulling Their Leg
In the present publication, Jirka Pfahl presents photographs whose immediate
context cannot be reconstructed by the uninitiated observer. Rather, this
heterogeneous collection of pictorial causes seems to want to say over and
over again "I'm here already". But where, we are forced to ask. There are
both references to the everyday and to club and party culture, as well as
quotes from the world of art, but nothing seems to make any real sense. We
get to see glimpses of the secondary arenas of art production and
communication, figures in action (but what exactly are they doing?),
replicas of the artist's works and the occasional exhibition view ? yet
without any explanatory information. We are faced with an open sided archive
of images, without knowledge as to its selection criteria. The final
selection thus appears subjective, resisting clear interpretation, and any
conclusions about the author/s of the images are unnecessary. Strewn in
between the images, the statement "We don't intentionally do it for you"
underlines this rejection for the viewer, along the lines of: "No entry if
code unknown." Of course, being thus turned down only serves to heighten
passion. Who is behind this collective? What is there to discover behind the
door? What connects all these incidents? Jirka Pfahl is obviously laying 
tracks, his photographs seek the trail of the great bear. Whether the artist
wishes to permit the shooting of the bear or rather conquer its territory
for good with the text piece "I guess we should give it a try in the market"
shown on the cover of the book, remains to be seen.