Information sheet

Press conference to the exhibition EVA & ADELE RED. New paintings and graphics 15 March – 1 June 2008 Thursday, 13 March 2008, 11 am Exhibition rooms, basement Dialouge partners:

Stella Rollig, Director Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz

EVA & ADELE, Artists Press Contact: Mag.a Nina Kirsch nina.kirsch@lentos.at, 0732/7070/3603 www.lentos.at

EVA & ADELE RED. New paintings and graphics 15 March – 1 June 2008 Press Date: Thursday, 13 March 2008, 11 am Opening: Friday, 14 March 2008, 7 pm

“The whole world” knows EVA & ADELE, the extravagant artist couple from Berlin that has

been adding glamor to the major events of the international art world for over fifteen years:

conspicuous, sparkling, attractive.

Yet EVA & ADELE’s work is more than their self-invention and self-presentation as a live act

and living art work. For their solo exhibition at the Lentos Art Museum EVA & ADELE have

conceived a presentation of their artistic work in a comprehensive survey ranging from a

large sculpture, a series of picture panel objects, about 25 paintings and several hundred

drawings. The selection from their painting oeuvre focuses on works from recent years.

Upon entering the foyer, visitors are received by EVA & ADELE’s Biographical Sculpture No.

9, House of Futuring, a walk-in construction made of 151 canvases.

The next encounter, the Golden Manifesto, materializes the artists’ conceptual stance: the

slogans “Coming out of the future”, “Wherever we are is museum” and “Over the boundaries

of gender” are arranged as panels gilded with gold leaf.

Shown for the first time in Lentos, the Performative Installation 208 is a 3 x 12 meter long

composition of works on paper, a radical investigation of material and technique inviting

visitors to enter into a kind of morphological game, to drift through multiply superimposed

forms and shapes. Stringency and chaos, a mysterious language of symbols, the puzzling

abundance of forms and signs, portraits and the recurring logo of EVA & ADELE

demonstrate affinity and harmony and disparity and individuality at the same time. What is

striking about these works is their diversity and their tension, their power and their

delicateness.

The central ensemble of the exhibition is Transformer-Performer (2005-2008). The large

format paintings show forceful images, which achieve their intensive effect with complex

layering and interpenetration, intensive colors, collage elements and emblematic subject

matter: animals, mythical creatures, winged beings, women in fetishized clothing, male sex

organs, enchanting object – and again and again themselves, EVA & ADELE. The

mediatization of the art figure EVA & ADELE is expanded in painting. At the same time, the

depiction of EVA & ADELE is the basis and framework for the painting, for questions raised

in painting. Based on and beyond this, EVA & ADELE formulate solutions for contemporary

painting art.

Like the creation of their self (their life, their external appearance), EVA & ADELE’s artistic

work is also based on a strategy of pictorial development, with which social issues are

discussed with all their consequences – beyond the realm of expectations and conventions.

The presentation of EVA & ADELE has been conceived as a double exhibition. Concurrent

with the presentation in Linz, the Museum der Moderne Rupertinum Salzburg shows the

exhibition EVA & ADELE Rosa – Early Photography and Video (16 March – 8 June 2008).

Both exhibitions are accompanied by an extensive catalogue book, published by DuMont

Verlag, ROSA ROT, 144 pages, with numerous pictures and essays by Sabine Kampmann

and Margit Zuckriegl, an interview by Nina Kirsch and a preface by Stella Rollig and Toni

Stooss.

Press and PR: Mag.a Nina Kirsch, nina.kirsch@lentos.at or +43(0)732/7070/3603 Lentos Art Museum Linz Ernst-Koref-Promenade 1, 4020 Linz Tel.: +43 (0) 732/ 7070 3600 or 3614 | Fax: +43 (0) 732/ 7070 3604 info@lentos.at | www.lentos.at Opening hours: daily 10 am – 6 pm, Thurs., 10 am – 9 pm

EVA & ADELE RED. New paintings and graphics 15 March – 1 June 2008 Press date: Thursday, 13 March 2008, 11 am Opening: Friday, 14 March 2008, 7 pm List of exhibits

Biographical Sculpture No. 9, House of Futuring, 2005 built out of 151 canvasses, oil on canvas, both sides courtesy: Sprengel Museum Hannover, Donation Eva & Adele

Goldenes Manifest 12 pieces,1992-2006 oil on gold-plated blackboards

Transformer-Performer, Mulholland Drive, 2007 Collage, oil on canvas 150 x 200 cm Transformer-Performer, Echo, 2005 Collage, oil on canvas 200 x 300 cm

Transformer-Performer, Paloma, 2005 Collage, oil on canvas 150 x 200 cm . Transformer-Performer, St. Pauli, 2006 Collage, oil on canvas 150 x 200 cm Transformer-Performer, Rote Liebe, 2005 Collage, oil on canvas 200 x 300 cm Transformer-Performer, Zauberflöte,2006 Collage, oil on canvas 110 x 140 cm

Transformer-Performer, Alpenmedusa, 2006 Collage, oil on canvas 150 x 200 cm Aphrodite, 2007 oil on canvas 150 x 200 cm

Zauberblick, 2008 oil on canvas 150 x 200 cm Alpha, 2008 oil on canvas 150 x 200 cm Transformer-Performer, Fee, 2006 oil on canvas 150 x 200 cm

Transformer-Performer, Wolpadinger, 2007 Collage, oil on canvas 200 x 300 cm Transformer-Performer, Dauergeil, 2006 Collage, oil on canvas 150 x 200 cm Transformer-Performer, Schwanzmädchen, 2005 Collage, oil on canvas 150 x 200 cm

Transformer-Performer, Stanley, 2006 Collage, oil on canvas 150 x 200 cm Transformer-Performer, Philip, 2005 Collage, oil on canvas 150 x 200 cm Cum-Extension, Beckmann’s Masken,2007 oil on canvas 40 x 60 cm Cum-Extension, Goya’s Mayas, 2007 oil on canvas 40 x 60 cm Cum-Extension, De Kooning meets Gorky,2007 oil on canvas 40 x 60 cm

Allos, 2007 oil on canvas 150 x 400 cm

Ladykiller, 2008 oil on canvas 150 x 200 cm

Performative Installation 208, 2003 – 2007 208 pieces, 3 x 12 m

EVA & ADELE RED. New paintings and graphics 15 March – 1 June 2008 Press date: Thursday, 13 March 2008, 11 am Opening: Friday, 14 March 2008, 7 pm EVA & ADELE – Group and Solo Exhibitions SELECTED PERFORMANCES 1991 Wedding Metropolis, Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin (Germany). 1992 WINGS I, Documenta IX, Kassel (Germany). 1993 WINGS I, XLV Biennale di Venezia, Venice (Italy). 1995 WINGS II, XLVI Biennale di Venezia Venice (Italy). 1997 WINGS III, Documenta X, Kassel (Germany). Skulptur Projekte, Münster (Germany). XLVII Biennale di Venezia, Venice (Italy). Mega Posters in Basel during the Month of July, Basel (Switzerland). 1998 Kiasma, Museum, Helsinki (Finland). Manifesta II, Luxemburg (Luxemburg). The Promise of Photography, Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (Japan). 1999 XLVIII Biennale di Venezia, Venice (Italy). Neues Museum und Stadtraum Weimar, Weimar (Germany). Kunsthaus Zürich, Zurich (Switzerland). The Promise of Photography, Kestner-Gesellschaft, Hanover (Germany), Centre National de la Photographie, Paris (France), PS 1 Center of Contemporary Art, New York (USA). 2000 Over the Edges, S.M.A.K., Gent (Belgium). La Beauté, Avignon (France). The Promise of Photography, Akademie der Künste, Berlin (Germany). 2001 XLIX Biennale di Venezia, Venice (Italy). The Promise of Photography, Schirn-Kunsthalle, Frankfurt/Main (Germany). 2002 Documenta XI, Kassel (Germany). B.OPEN, BALTIC - The Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead (England). 2003 XLX Biennale di Venezia, Venice (Italy). Albert-Ludwigs University Freiburg, Freiburg (Germany). Steirischer Herbst, Graz (Austria). Centro Cultural Andratx, Mallorca (Spain). 2004 Begrüßungsperformance/Welcome Performance, Forum de l´Image, Toulouse (France). Frühstücksperformance/Breakfast Performance, Österreichischer Skulpturenpark, Graz (Austria). Wanderperformance/Hiking Performance, Centre PasquArt, Biel (Switzerland). Sprengel Museum Hannover, Hanover (Germany). 2005 T-Mobile Art Talk, T-Center St. Marx, Vienna (Austria). XLXI Biennale di Venezia, Venice (Italy). 2006 Viktor Pinchuk Art Foundation, Kiev (Ukraine). Latner Wedding, Chateau de Bagnols (France).

PERSONAL EXHIBITIONS 1997 EVA & ADELE - CUM (Catalogue), Sprengel Museum, Hanover (Germany). 1998 EVA & ADELE, Generous Miracles Gallery, One-Night Exhibition (13 May 1998), New York (USA). 1999 EVA & ADELE - Wherever We Are Is Museum (Catalogue), Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Berlin (Germany). 2000 EVA & ADELE - Logo (Catalogue), Moderne Galerie Saarland Museum, Saarbrücken (Germany). EVA & ADELE - Close-up & Blow-up (Catalogue), Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont, Paris (France). EVA & ADELE - Logo (Catalogue), Overbeck Gesellschaft, Lübeck (Germany). 2001 EVA & ADELE - Logo (Catalogue), Neuer Sächsischer Kunstverein Dresden, (Germany). EVA & ADELE - GET ON MY WINGS, Paris Photo, Carrousel du Louvre, Paris (France). EVA & ADELE - ENCORE, Galerie de l´E.R.B.A.N., Nantes (France). 2002 EVA & ADELE - Double Selfportraits, Galleri Stefan Andersson, Umea (Sweden). 2003 EVA & ADELE - SHY, Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont, Paris (Germany). EVA & ADELE - PAINTING QUEER, Centro Cultural Andratx, Andratx (Mallorca, Spain). EVA & ADELE - SCULPTURE IN THE PARC, Villa XPIRA, Zweibrücken (Germany). EVA & ADELE - FUTURING COMPANY, Galerie Kaj Forsblom, Helsinki (Finland). EVA & ADELE - WATERMUSIC, Video Sculpture - Steirischer Herbst, Graz (Austria). EVA & ADELE - LOGO, Galerie & Edition Artelier, Graz (Austria). EVA & ADELE - DAY BY DAY PAINTING (Catalogue), The Nordic Watercolour Museum, Skärhamn (Sweden). 2004 EVA & ADELE - ACT, Brigitte March Galerie, Stuttgart (Germany). EVA & ADELE - GET ON MY WINGS, Les Abattoirs – Musée, Centre d´Art moderne et contemporain, Toulouse (France). EVA & ADELE - FRU FRU, Galerie Asbæk, Copenhagen (Denmark). EVA & ADELE - GESCHLOSSENE GESELLSCHAFT (Catalogue), Galerie Michael Schultz, Berlin (Germany). 2005 EVA & ADELE - Death of Performance, Gallery Claire Oliver, New York (USA). EVA & ADELE - House of Futuring, Sprengel Museum Hannover, (Germany). 2006 NEON, Galerie Kaj Forsblom, Helsinki (Finland) GOLDENES MANIFEST, Galerie Brigitte March, Stuttgart (Germany) LASSO, Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont, Paris (France) GROUP EXHIBITIONS 1991 Nichts und, Galerie Nikolaus Sonne, Berlin (Germany). 1992 Galleri Faurschou, Copenhagen (Denmark). 1994 Suture - Phantasmen der Vollkommenheit (Catalogue), Salzburger Kunstverein, Salzburg (Austria). Körpernah, Galerie Krinzinger, Wien (Austria). 1995 Landschaft - Mit dem Blick der Neunziger Jahre (Catalogue), Mittelrhein Museum, Koblenz (Germany), Museum Schloss, Burgk/Saale (Germany). 1996 Landschaft - Mit dem Blick der Neunziger Jahre (Catalogue), Haus am Waldsee, Berlin (Germany). 1997 Art Club Berlin, Art Forum, Berlin (Germany). 1998 Art Club Berlin, Mies van der Rohe Pavilion, Barcelona (Spain). The Promise of Photography, Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (Japan). Pour un Objet Dard - Dildo Show, Tous les Dragons de notre Vie, Paris (France). 1999 The Promise of Photography, Kestner-Gesellschaft, Hanover (Germany), Centre National de la Photographie, Paris (France), PS 1 Center of Contemporary Art, New York (USA).

Drawings that I found, Stéphane Ackermann - Agence d´Art Contemporain, Luxemburg (Luxemburg). Licht auf Weimar (Catalogue), Stadtschloss, Neues Museum & Stadtraum Weimar, Weimar (Germany). Weltuntergang und Prinzip Hoffnung, Kunsthaus Zürich, Zurich (Switzerland). Die Lesbarkeit der Kunst - Das XX Jahrhundert. Ein Jahrhundert Kunst in Deutschland (Catalogue), Kunstbibliothek Berlin, Berlin (Germany). Acimma Do Bem e Do Mal (Above the Good and Devil) (Catalogue), Paço das Artes, Sao Paulo (Brazil). I remember, Nadine Gandy Gallery, Prague (Czechia). 2000 The Promise of Photography, Akademie der Künste, Berlin (Germany). made for fun (Catalogue), Städtische Galerie Nordhorn, Nordhorn (Germany). Hybrid - Jeux d' Amour (Catalogue), BAC, London (England). Excentriques - Un Manifeste de l´Apparence, Boutique le Printemps, Paris (France). Over the Edges (Catalogue), Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Gent (Belgium). Dem Portrait auf der Spur (Catalogue), Internationale Tage, Ingelheim (Germany). Le Corps mutant (Catalogue), Galerie Enrico Navarra, Paris (France). Narcisse blessé (Catalogue), Passage du Rez, Paris (France). 2001 The Promise of Photography, Schirn-Kunsthalle, Frankfurt/Main (Germany). Jheronimus Bosch Exhibition, Museum Boijmanns van Beuningen, Rotterdam (Netherlands). 15ème Rencontres Vidéo Art Plastique, Centre d´Art contemporain de Basse-Normandie, Hérouville (France). Le Clonage d´Adam (Catalogue), Institut Supérieur du Langage Plastique (L´Iselp), Bruxelles (Belgium). 2002 Femmes Photographes, Transphotographiques, Festival de la Photographie, Lille (France). Dessin XXL (Catalogue), Le Lieu Unique, Nantes (France). ZOO, FIAC Paris, Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont, Paris (France). 2003 …des Duos et des Couples (Catalogue), Galerie d´Art du Conseil Général des Bouches-du-Rhône, Aix en Provence (France). Face & Cie (Facéties) (Catalogue), Musée des Beaux-Arts de Tourcoing, Tourcoing (France). La Fête (Catalogue), Espace Bellevue, Biarritz (France), Museo Valenciano de la Ilustracion y la Modernidad, Valencia (Spain). Something about Love (Catalogue), Casino Luxemburg, Forum d’Art contemporain (Luxemburg). FIAC Paris, Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont, Paris (France). WONDER, Galerie Bernhard Bischoff, Thun (Switzerland). 2004 Carnaval (Catalogue), Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, Rio de Janeiro (Brasil). Arco Madrid, Galerie Kaj Forsblom, Helsinki (Finland), Galerie Asbaek, Copenhagen (Denmark). Art & Vidéo. Où sont les femmes? (Catalogue), Le Lieu unique, Nantes (France). I NEED YOU, Centre PasquArt, Biel (Switzerland). Re:Location Shake (Catalogue), Jan Koniarek Gallery, Trnava (Slovakia). Bocca de la Verità (Catalogue), Kunstverein Bad Salzdetfurth, Bodenburg (Germany). Art Basel, Galerie & Edition Artelier, Basel (Switzerland). Art Cologne, Galerie Michael Schultz, Berlin (Germany). Sculpture, FIAC Paris, Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont, Paris (France). Artforum Berlin, Galerie Michael Schultz, Berlin (Germany). HAPPY BIRTHDAY!, Galerie Jérome de Noirmont, Paris (France). Art Basel Miami Beach, Galerie Michael Schultz, Berlin (Germany). 2005 Huis Clos - Roomer´s Sight: Beebone & Domesle, IG Bildende Kunst, Vienna (Austria). Future Perfect, Claire Oliver Fine Art Gallery, New York (USA).

Art Basel, Galerie & Edition Artelier, Basel (Switzerland). Fractures of Life.Kiasma-Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinky (Finland). Licht-visuelle Energien,TU Dresden, Dresden (Germany). Pierre Molinier - Jeux de Miroirs, Musée des Beaux -Arts, Bordeaux (France). Superstars, Kunsthalle Wien, (Austria). Transatlantische Impulse, Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin (Germany). Tête à Tête, FIAC, Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont, Paris (France) 2006 FLOW Miami, Claire Oliver, New York (USA) New York Museum of Water, New York (USA) FIAC, Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont, Paris (France) DIVA Art Fair, Claire Oliver, New York (USA) Miroslav Tich˘. Artists for Tich˘ - Tich˘ for Artists ( catalogue), Moravska Galerie (Südmärische Nationalgalerie), Brünn (Czech Republic) Art Basel, Galerie & Edition Artelier, Graz ( Austria) Arte Fiera de Bologna, Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont, Paris (France) ADVERTISING 1. Presentation of ABSOLUT EVA & ADELE, Musée du Jeu de Paume, Paris (France). Preview Solo show 2008 EVA & ADELE - "ROSAROT", Museum der Moderne Salzburg, Rupertinum, Salzburg (Austria) EVA & ADELE - "ROSAROT" , Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz, Linz (Austria) 2007 INVINCEBLE, Patrick Ebensperger, Graz (Austria), Nov 9th - Jan 5th, 2008 EVA & ADELE DAUERGEIL, White Trash Contemporary, Hamburg (Germany) ANGELS, DEVILS & SEXMONSTERS, Claire Oliver, New York (USA), 17 May - 16 June EVA & ADELE - Erik van Lieshout, Galerie Ron Mandos, Amsterdam (Nederland) Group exhibition 2007 J'embrasse pas, Collection Lambert, Avignon (France), October 28 - January 13, 2008 Arte e Omosessualita, Palazzina Reale-Santa Maria Novella, Florence (Italy), October 27 - January 6, 2008 SCOPE Miami Artfair, Miami (USA ) Gallery CLAIRE OLIVER, booth 94, Dec 5th, 2007 to Dec 9th, 2007 DUOS, Galerie Patrick Ebensperger, Graz (Austria) Cinéma, Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont, Paris (France), 23 May - 21 July Artissima Turin, Galerie Patrick Ebensperger, Graz (Austria) Verlorene Liebesmühe - Fünf Arbeiten für den automatischen Radierer, Westfälisches Landesmuseum Münster, Münster (Germany) Arte Fiera de Bologna, Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont, Paris (France) Los Angeles Art Show, Santa Monica, CA, Claire Oliver, New York (USA) Different. Aesthetics and poetry between art and homosexuality, Palazzo della Ragione, Milano (Italy), 10 July - 11 Nov. 2007 Selected performances 2007 XLXII Biennale di Venezia, Venice (Italy) Documenta XII, Kassel (Germany) Skulptur Projekte Münster, Münster (Germany)

EVA & ADELE RED. New paintings and graphics 15 March – 1 June 2008 Press Date: Thursday, 13 March 2008, 11 am Opening: Friday, 14 March 2008, 7 pm Stella Rollig, Toni Stooss Catalouge Preface The art world today is a world of spectacular events and appearances. Gazing and

amazement often even create the first immediate impression, with which contemporary art

presentation, which is sometimes called hermetic, draws attention to itself.

Yet when it is not a matter of attractive staging or so-called events, but rather of a self-reliant

and ongoing life-act by artists, then it is even more the case that the artistic action is a

commentary on the art presentation. EVA & ADELE’s appearances at international exhibition

openings with public appeal, at the start of the Venice Biennale, the documenta in Kassel or

at the most important art fairs, have brought them worldwide fame and repute. As an artist

couple continuously working together, however, they are far more than merely a

conspicuous, sometimes shrill commentary on the most popular art events of our time.

The presentation of EVA & ADELE, which has been conceived as a double exhibition, shows

a documentation at the Museum der Moderne Salzburg – Rupertinum of the shared path the

artist pair has taken since they first met. The Lentos Art Museum in Linz, on the other hand,

offers an insight into their collaborative artistic work with new paintings and drawings and

Biographical Sculptures.

Salzburg thus starts at the beginning, so to speak, and reconstructs the couple’s first major

journey, which was a process of becoming, a gradual genesis, and a formulation already

alluding to an artistic development that was still unclear. Hellas is a new adaptation of film

material from 1989, which is now set up for the Rupertinum for the first time as a

simultaneous seven-part video installation. Previously unseen material has been reworked

and enriched with later sequences. The result is a document of a highly unusual artists’

journey that is both conceptual and sensual. Whereas in times past artists had the ambition

to travel mostly to gain new experiences, collect exotic impressions or meet foreigners, this

journey served the two artists primarily as a means of shared mutual assurance and for

clarifying emotional, private and intentional artistic possibilities. Hellas, a journey to the

“cradle of humanity”, as EVA & ADELE say with a wink of the eye, is principally a journey

that has not yet come to an end.

This narrative, filmic space is complemented with the presentation of the accompanying suite

of over 1,500 Polaroid pictures that were taken every day of the journey and have been

taken day by day since then, when the elaborate process of their shared preparation for

coping with daily processes and appearances is finished. The essential artistic portion of the

transformation of two separate artists into the androgynous pair EVA & ADELE is

accomplished through their artistic production. The results of this complex concept include

accessories such as make-up, costumes, tables and suitcases, or even the pink VW bus that

has accompanied them for years as a painted domicile, a means of transportation, studio,

and memento, and now forms the start of the Rupertinum presentation.

The fact that the artistic conception of EVA & ADELE is not exhausted in their performative

actions, but instead provides the energetic basis for a much more extensive work, is evident

in the complementary show in Linz. In Lentos visitors are greeted by the Biographical

Sculpture No. 9, House of Futuring, a walk-in construction made of 151 canvases. The

meanwhile almost legendary building forms the programmatic start of a presentation that

centers, however, around painting and drawing. A condensed overview is presented here for

the first time of this significant component in EVA & ADELE’s oeuvre.

The exhibited ensemble Transformer-Performer (2005-2008) shows forceful images with

complex layers, intensive colors, collage elements and motif quotations: animals, mythical

creatures, winged figures, women in fetishized clothing, spread legs, male sex organs,

enchanting objects and, again and again, EVA & ADELE themselves. The pictures celebrate

the beauty and vitality of sexuality and tell of the felicitous wonder of being able to take one’s

own erotic personality seriously and realize it in living practice.

In comparison, the works on paper are very delicate, hung on a large wall, close together,

edge to edge as a shimmering swarm of information. The period in which the picture were

made covers many years; the formats and techniques are diverse as well. Although the

themes, motifs and composition have a clear affinity to the canvases, the way they are made,

which brings what is ephemeral about artistic production into play, conveys an intimate tone

here, which is further accentuated by the delicate lace borders. The motif of the journey, of

traveling and development – central topoi of the Salzburg exhibition – withdraw more into the

background of production in the paintings, but also especially in the drawings. Nevertheless,

most of the pictures were made during travels – in the hours of retreat from the light of the

public eye. They bear witness to the phases in which EVA & ADELE, conversing as artists,

renew the radiant, positive force, with which they infect people, every time they appear, with

an inkling of the happiness it must mean to be able to realize a vision of oneself.

Thanks are due first and foremost to EVA & ADELE, who have intensively participated in the

preparation of both exhibitions and this book in their open, lovable and famously charming

way. From the stories and descriptions that they have recounted more trustingly than ever

before, Margit Zuckriegl has composed her essay. Nina Kirsch was able to conduct an

extensive interview in personal conversation. Another essay by Sabine Kampmann takes the

Biographical Sculpture No. 9, House of Futuring as the starting point for a reflection on how

EVA & ADELE expand identity options under the conditions of heterosexually marked

society.

The significance of the artist duo as performance artists and as artists, as a mute

commentary on art and as an eloquent example of symbolic associative art production is

traced for the first time in this cooperation between two art institutions. Hopefully as many

visitors as possible will undertake the “journey” from one exhibition location to the other to

follow the footsteps of a unique art phenomenon.

Stella Rollig Toni Stooss

Director Director

Lentos Art Museum Museum der Moderne Salzburg

EVA & ADELE RED. New paintings and graphics 15 March – 1 June 2008 Press Date: Thursday, 13 March 2008, 11 am Opening: Friday, 14 March 2008, 7 pm Sabine Kampmann House of Futuring – Working on the Housing of Futuring

EVA & ADELE’s House of Futuring is a work about time, about identity, and about what we

can become, if we want to become something. What EVA & ADELE wanted to become has

been evident to us now for nearly twenty years: we know them both from personal

encounters or from countless media reports as two “ladies” in extravagant outfits, who

always smile enchantingly and never seem to be missing from any major event in the art

scene. EVA & ADELE have created themselves not only as media stars and art figures, but

also as private persons, and they re-invent themselves again and again from day to day. The

way that we always perceive and refer to them as “ladies” in quotation marks is their program

and ties into the purposely deployed cracks that they have built into their almost identical,

twin-like appearance. Clothing, make-up and habitus initially result in an almost over-coded

image of femininity that is substantially irritated by Eva’s physique and the bald-shaved

heads. Neither of them is unambiguously identifiable as either man or woman. Instead, EVA

& ADELE present themselves as a double being with an ambiguous gender identity. And that

is exactly what they wanted to become: man and woman at the same time, in permanent

oscillation. With this concept they challenge not only the art scene, but also the traditional

gender order of our society as a whole.

In our world marked by the heterosexual paradigm, the diversity of gender identities is

narrowly constrained: a person is to be either man or woman – as a rule there is nothing in

between. In this thinking, biological sex always defines socially determined gender or gender

identity. Everything is oriented to unambiguity; defects or deviations are accepted at best as

mistakes. A transsexual presumably “born in the wrong body” can be in search of their

authentic gender identity throughout a whole lifetime. It is precisely this illusion of

“authenticity”, the binary regulation of sexuality and the concomitant suppression of diversity

that is massively called into question by the existence of EVA & ADELE. By starting with their

artistic concept from their own bodies1, they succeed in crucially disrupting the sex-gender

system with its logic that ultimately always takes recourse to biological, anatomical facts.

This disruption is what Judith Butler called for with the term “performativity”: changing future

discourse about gender identity with repeated (artistic) assertions in the present.2 The special

potential that Butler conjectures is to be found in the practices of travesty and seems to be

affirmed in EVA & ADELE’s concept: their special use of clothing and make-up reveals

gender identity as an imitation, casting doubt on the idea of heterosexual originality itself at

the same time.

Verbally this performative practice is reflected in the term “FUTURING” coined by EVA &

ADELE. The gerund that does not exist in English is a neologism, an expression that EVA &

ADELE have been using for many years. It can be seen on the canvases that the House of

Futuring is made of, and wherever it appears, it means an anticipation of forms of living and

gender models that will be taken for granted in the future. Yet as an artistic concept and

attitude of life, “FUTURING” plays out entirely in the present, avoiding every form of

historization and every superficial indication of a personal past. This is also why EVA &

ADELE’s biography is reduced to the indication of their body measurements (bust, waist,

hip). In the material work of the artists, conventional vital statistics are replaced by so-called

Biographical Sculptures, in which traces of their lives are hidden. This is also the case with

the F: the canvases used to build the house are from the time before the joint living-art-work

EVA & ADELE. Originally the canvases were not worked on together, but separately. The

thick layers of paint with which the artists later painted over them now seem to cover up –

similarly to the make-up on the couple’s faces – a presumably genuine and mysterious core.

Times past are stored in them and yet remain permanently present as cryptic layers.

As they repeatedly stress, EVA & ADELE come from the future, and they are building a

house here, in our present – is that not paradoxical? It is just as paradoxical as the artist

duo’s entire living-art concept that plays with times and biographies and obviously makes

itself perfectly at home in the present. The architectural construction of the House of Futuring

can be associated with two types of houses. From the outside this is initially the original

naïve form of a house with a pitched roof, familiar from children’s drawings and only needing

a painted chimney with smoke coming out to be complete. Inside the house, on the other

1 In this sense they embody the “material-semiotic actor” described by Donna Haraway, that succeeds in allowing “sex” and “gender” to processually emerge simultaneously and thus cancel each other out. Cf. Donna Haraway, “Situated Knowledge. The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective, in: Donna Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, Routledge, 1991, p. 183. 2 Cf. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, Routledge, 1999, pp. 171 ff.

hand, it cites an ancient temple. Here there is a windowless room, like a “cella”, which can

only be reached from the entrance by means of passage along the edge. Yet whereas a

statue of a divinity was found in the “cella” of ancient temple architecture, the space in EVA &

ADELE’s House of Futuring is completely empty. And at the same time again, it is not: for

EVA & ADELE are also permanently present here. The artists’ eyes are fixed upon us from

above as paintings, on the inside of the roof.

“Wherever we are is museum” – one of EVA & ADELE’s continuously recurring slogans –

reveals its facets of meaning against this background: here “museum” means primarily the

“museion” of Ancient Greece, a temple district devoted to the muses. These muses, the

goddesses of fine arts, are embodied in a way by EVA & ADELE in their living-art concept.

By citing this idea in a museum for contemporary art, thus recalling their origins and

spatializing them again through the house-in-a-house motif, they additionally establish

“museum” as a mental space of action for the Fine Arts. With the installation developed for

the Sprengel Museum, EVA & ADELE have created a temple “for themselves” and “from

themselves”. At the same time, though, they also cite the house as a motif of desire: as a

desire for a place where one can rest, as a desire for home, for coming home, and for

shelter. The House of Futuring is hence a metaphor that has become an object: a metaphor

for their own house of identity that the artists have invented for themselves, making

themselves, their art and their life at home, and on which they perpetually continue to work

and build on.

EVA & ADELE RED. New paintings and graphics 15 March – 1 June 2008 Press Date: Thursday, 13 March 2008, 11 am Opening: Friday, 14 March 2008, 7 pm Margit Zuckriegl The World Becoming A Journey

Hellas and the beginning of a shared being A girl dressed all in white is dancing in a meadow. The dew on the grass, the fragile

blossoms beneath her feet, the dark blue of approaching dawn changing gradually to pink, to

gold; a faint ringing of bells wafts by. From a lonely house of grey stone the dim silhouette of

a face peers out; one sees overgrown train tracks, a sheep picks its way over the meagre

undergrowth on gaunt hooves, a summer in the south smells of thyme, rosemary and

shimmering heat over dusty dirt roads.

With black eyes the girl gazes up at the azure of the sky; the girl is a Hellenistic Ephebe, a

virginal Iphigenia, one consecrated to God treading to the sacrifice, a youth with a shaved

head on the path to the temenos. A tale is being told, an archetypical legend from the depths

of history. A guideline is given from the origins of the myths to the appearance of theatre,

from the beginning of the journey to the creation of one’s own world.

A being is dancing over a meadow and at the same time is pacing out the circumference of a

stage that is nothing less than the world itself. The movement of the dance is the

appropriation of the world and the formulation of a yearning: I am in you, and you are my I.

The movement is a marriage of articulation with perception: I dance while you look at me.

Your gaze rests on me and I perform your movements.

Music echoes from afar, but here the night is still The drowsy scent of flowers wafts close My thoughts have always, always been of you I wish to sleep but you must dance Unrelenting, rushing without pause Candles shimmer, violins pour out their hearts Dancers separate, then close the ranks Everyone glows but you are pale

And you must dance, strange arms enfold you Reaching for your heart; oh do not suffer them to do so! Your white gown flutters by like gossamer wings And you, a gentle graceful figure And sweeter the perfume of night flows forth More dreamy yet from blossom’s chalice My thoughts have always, always been of you I wish to sleep but you must dance3

Hellas is the poetic protocol of a becoming. It documents the gradual growing together of the

artist duo EVA & ADELE: in intention and daily life, in inner attitude and outer appearance. It

also describes the precise demarcation of a world that will, in future, be the pair’s sphere of

life. Everything they undergo, conquer and achieve is part of their world and part of their life;

all the locales and places of our world in which they appear belong to the detailed guidelines

for the life and path of their artistic concept. What began with Hellas is carried further day by

day. The dance over the meadow is a careful birthing after which will follow a long becoming,

the growing of a new identity.

It is no coincidence that the journey to Greece proceeds over the traces of archaic

civilizations, not without reason that the path leads over Apennine landscapes, far from the

beaten tracks of tourism and far away from the idyllic brochures, to the Aegean wastelands.

Lonely country roads are driven over in the camping bus, solitary regions are headed for,

discarded routes are emulated. Where there is no-one, something new will arise; where no-

one lives who can remember the past something will move that progresses towards the

future; EVA & ADELE are on the way to their “FUTURING Project”.

The cinematic diary Hellas is brought to light as a document of the mutual becoming of I and

as an example of an ultimate journey of betrothal at a time when for the first time the shared

history of EVA & ADELE is being viewed in a retrospective. The two have been around for

twenty years now and in these two decades they have become an essential component of

the international art-event world without repudiating their own world of art and life.

The wedding, the initial event of their publicly celebrated life together, took place in 1991 on

the occasion of the exhibition Metropolis in Berlin in the Martin Gropius Bau. However, two

years before there had been the overture to what was to become a kind of merging. Both

3 Theodor Storm, Hyacinths; the poem was written as an invocation to an (impossible) love. First

published 1852, quoted here in English translation by Greta Dunn.

artists agreed to work together on their artistic projects; this was followed by an unremitting

and irreversible alignment of their beings.

The journey to Hellas was the first step in this direction. And it became much more than a

trial honeymoon: it became the genesis of a double artistic personality that owed thanks to

the expunging of the respective individual personal histories.4

Casa Rasa

The girl in the white dress is a being without a past; the observing eye of the camera belongs

to a film-maker without identity. Two people who, because of their encounter slough off their

skins, so to speak, live towards one another and interleave into one another. Everything that

could evoke the burden and ballast of a preceding existence is stripped off; the outer change

is the visible means for undertaking this and their appearance will henceforth be their

trademark 5. Nevertheless, above and beyond this, the fundamental alteration is what makes

possible such external settings: feeling towards the Other in the I, and searching for what is

the Same in the Counterpart. Both individuals are artistic characters through and through in

whom is deeply embedded a revolt against time-honoured codes and norms, against

conventional societal stereotypes. However, this rebellion is by no means a form of berserk

actionism but rather a gentle inclination of the head in the other direction, a serene negating

and a smiling passing-over. This might not always have been the case as a human

maturation, which was necessary and fundamental for the gauging of the equilibrium in terms

of content, preceded the mutual becoming a pair. Here, then, one plus one still makes one

and not the sum of two different entities. The possible diversification between the former

biographic lifelines is sacrificed on the altar of shared life planning. The erased early lives

create the necessary space, yes, almost a vacuum, that draws the facets of the becoming

into it with the pull of a black hole. Both were never strangers to what was metamorphic in

being an artist, both were caught in a chrysalis of role images from which they were

apparently unable to free themselves singly. The shared path, the venturing on a journey in

the smallest space and in a situation of immediate proximity became the magical event of

transition, the transformation of one being into another, from two different personalities into a

common one. Nor is a form of role allocation intended: in a work of art that is art and life at

4 Here we are dealing less with how EVA & ADELE are perceived (by the art world) and how they might be regarded as an ironic commentary on the “eventification” of art events, and more with how the genesis of their artistic presence might have taken place. EVA & ADELE have also discerned in the textual interpretations of their life-art concept so far an “incredible need to describe” their outer appearance and their performances. 5 One always speaks of brands or brand names when the concurrence of immediate external recognizability and calculable content is intended. This is valid for EVA & ADELE insofar as it pertains solely to the realm of their performances and negates thereby the potential of an individual artistic endeavour; cf. Mark Gisbourne, Double Act, Munich 2007, III.67.

the same time,6 there can be no allocated roles and no traditional hierarchies. As were the

personal biographies, so were other conventional schemata sacrificed. This proverbial tabula

rasa allows of undertaking, artistically and existentially, a new beginning. Hellas, or Journey

to Greece, which, significantly, commenced from the Italian Casa Rasa 7, is on the one hand

a journey away from the past and a specific individuality and on the other a journey towards

a new future and a mutual becoming of being. The journey itself, therefore, becomes the

synonym for becoming and the emergence of a new existence. The unique documentation of

this journey is a heretofore unseen compendium of pictures, an intimate poem in seven

verses bearing witness to the magical fascination of Eros and the boundless power of the

imagination – a profession of faith and a hymn to a world without obstacles and conventions.

The eternal bride

She lives her whole life in expectation of the wedding and in her knowledge of the

preparations: Die ewige Braut8 is hung with jewellery, clothed and provided with advice. She

waits, holding a bouquet of red blossoms, like a mute and enduring promise.

Here, a modern fairytale is being told, one fed from the old epics and legends and fanned by

a breath of the fantastic. EVA & ADELE go on a journey to another country and return as

something else from the shores of the beyond. As does plunging into water that reflects their

dreams, so does the progression purify them of the adhesive remnants of their earlier lives

and open up new worlds. The modern fairytale describes a country in which animals graze in

meadows, flowers and fruit grow, in which there are dark caves, holy fires, clear rivers and

wide skies. A country in which one can live and sleep, in which one can wander and dance,

in which one departs and arrives without worry and without sorrow.

The bride’s veil is carried on the breeze in the ancient olive orchard, candles are being lit on

the threshold, stones are being piled up – the ceremony will take place years later; the

eternal bride looks back from the future towards the present, an aeroplane makes buzzing

laps around the firmament.

Hellas tells the story of the marriage between EVA & ADELE, the story of the eternal bride

and of the constant expectation. The six chapters on the way to the becoming are joined by

an epilogue twelve years later: the story of the wedding and the fulfilment. EVA & ADELE

6 cf. Sabine Kampmann, Künstler Sein, (Being an Artist) Munich 2006, p.144. 7Casa Rasa is the name of a farm in Tuscany where the two artists’journey to Greece commenced. 8Tschingis Aitmatow, The Snow Leopard Zurich 2007; the protagonist develops the material of his planned opera The Eternal Bride to correspond to his own life story.

have transposed their mutual genesis into a shared life and work and have crowned it with

the seventh chapter: two brides look into the camera, bells ring, roses twinkle.

The story of the creation of an individual, new identity is not without history. The road to

forgetting is also the road to the future. Between this plumbing of the present, future and

past, the medium of film purports to be the ideal narrative vehicle because peculiarly innate

to it is the possibility of stopping, of going forwards or backwards or moving at different

speeds. Hellas also tells the story of EVA & ADELE as an example of a modern existence:

When life becomes a work of art and art is lived being, then the borders between a

productive lifetime and creaturely reflections are levelled. Every creative gesture is at the

same time an everyday act, every trivial task is at the same time reinforced by the aura of

artistic intention. Here, the perversion of a society based on a division of labour is truly

overcome and the ultimate degree of holism attained. Here also, however, integration into

the art business is implemented, a business from which EVA & ADELE distance themselves

but around which they still remain in orbit. Their presence at all important international art

events, which took place purely commentatively, experiences an expansion in the

permeation of art performance and art presentation. If formerly the premise was the

postulation, endorsed and interpreted time and again by many authors that, “We are the

works of art” 9, now it is now increasingly the claim, “We are showing our works of art!” 10

Thus are the portents reversed: the recipient, the interpreter, does not make their

appearance the work of art but rather themselves, as artists 11. EVA & ADELE compile their

works of art as a part of the daily process of living ad mastering their lives. That they

themselves represent the constantly recurring theme of their artistic activity and that they

place their media image at centre stage of their enterprise does not mean in reverse that

they themselves are not an active part of this current art scene of which they represent, the

incontrovertible exclamation marks.12

9 “Wherever we are is museum” is one of the best-known slogans of EVA & ADELE. 10“The art business has recognized EVA & ADELE only hesitantly and partially” says Robert Fleck in: EVA & ADELE, exhibition catalogue Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Ostfildern 1999, p. 60, and demands appreciation of not only their performance art but also the acceptance of their painterly oeuvre. 11 “Life art as a programme” is what Sabine Kampmann calls it, see footnote 4, p.149. 12 And so for percipients, their works of art, independent of their performances, are pictures, graphic art, photographs, video films just as others and as such should be questioned as to their genesis, content and context. This offers a slightly different point of view than that of Mark Gisbourne who writes, „The new paintings by EVA % ADELE – called by them mediaplastic – are mereley a natural result and an accumulation of the museum life (i.e., „art life“ MZ) that they lead.“ Mark Gisbourne, EVA & ADELE. Geschlossene Gesellschaft, Berlin 2004.

And therefore it is not only the constant self-portrayal that is the “primary material of their

invention of new forms” 13; the mute, fabled journey to the appropriation of the world and the

conquering of the self is thus a stringently formulated document of the portrayed becoming.

Concept art and baroque passion

Even without having recourse to the period before the Hellas journey one can decipher that

both Eva and Adele must have had a very reflective relationship to the art and art production

of their time. They did not tumble naively or childishly into the experience of their journey

together; rather, from the outset their shared beginning was based firmly in the context of art.

Following on from what was actually a coincidental encounter, a conceptive strategy for the

implementation of the aspired sublimation of experience and its contemplation soon

emerged. The alteration of their physical appearance and the optical similarity in wardrobe

and presentation was not arrived at via an intuitive and spontaneous approach nor via a

vague fancy for masquerade 14, the process was too thoroughly thought-out and adhered to

too consistently over the years for that. Rather, a creative process was instigated that

progresses in its differentiation and intensity absolutely without compromise. The medium

documenting this metamorphosis was the film compendium that has so far been denied to

the public 15. The poses, movements, dance steps, costumes and divestments all evolved for

and with the film. With the camera work, formal associations and symbolic allusions were

made, existential questions were posed and radical about-turns enacted.

The cutting which took place later, the reduced insertion of minimalist image and sound

track, the concentrated form and the simultaneity of the presentation in seven adjacent

projections running concurrently are proof of the professional and theoretical basic armature

on which this complex travel document is built.

The videos act as a storage medium for a picture story and thus as a medium of

remembrance of a process culminating in the new being. Working out the conceptive

approach in the oeuvre of EVA & ADELE has yet to be undertaken; nevertheless, what is

conceptual in their artistic practice and their methodical procedure cannot be overlooked.

13Mark Gisbourne, see note.3, III.85. 14 “Maskerade”, for instance, uses the artist duo Muntean and Rosenblum to describe their double authorship whereby the mask could offer them “protection from the problematical identification” of their own role, cf. Mark Gisbourne, see note.3, III.67. 15The Hellas Journey was originally documented on 13 VHS tapes of 60 minutes each. The original titles were: 1 The Blue Chicken / 2 The Green Fire / 3 Casa Rasa / 4 Via Appia / 5 The Bow to Earth / 6 Poseidon Olympia and Four Eggs / 7 Two Green Eyes / 8 The Arcadian Bride / 9 Firebird / 10 The American Bride / 11 The Cat Woman / 12 Kaliste / 13 Atlantis. From this material 6 video films were made of 33 minutes each. A seventh video was made in 2001 and cutting and post editing was undertaken in 2007.

The daily documentation of the optical becoming process in Polaroid photographs

corresponds to a media-staging strategy that has been known since the 1970s. The image-

pool has now grown to comprise some thousands of Polaroids – a personal iconography to

which the lineal growth of the time diagrams is due. Apart from this there are ranged

sequential works that include protagonists and percipients according to the participatory

principle: they function by virtue of strategic concepts that require consideration and

direction.

A sensuous, erotic, even blatant baroque content makes use of these conceptive formats in

a downright oppositional confrontation: where theatrical aspects become well-nigh excessive

and exuberant, the distinct and severely formal corset constrains the effervescent emotional

gesture. Where the stringent and reflexive components of the media form can be perceived

as hermetic or brittle, the narrative, poetic and ironic character of the performance relativizes

what is purely conceptive and systematic.

EVA & ADELE always narrate a story; the story of their self-becoming, the World Becoming,

the story of their art events and their encounters with people, the story of the strange

integration in foreign life compositions or the conspicuous reflections in other media public

displays. They themselves are the protagonists of this wide-ranging narrative material and

they are more reliable than all the actors in plays or performative stagings. This is because

they are always there, even when they are not seen. They are like the baroque spirit that

inspires opulent feasts, rich clothes or spectacular performances and creates from them a

sensual universe without neglecting the apotheosis of religious rituals and the effective

theatrical stage-settings. They are the ruffle-girded angels descending from the heavens and

conquering the inert strangers and their aura of the commonplace. Within the whole of this

staged game lies hidden the concept that was the catalyst and impetus for Hellas: the

journey towards oneself as the journey to conquer a new world. EVA & ADELE have always

been true to this principle and within the framework of this concept they continue to develop

their artistic work – a young and uncompromising work between conceptual stringency and a

baroque sensuality.

EVA & ADELE RED. New paintings and graphics 15 March – 1 June 2008 Press Date: Thursday, 13 March 2008, 11 am Opening: Friday, 14 March 2008, 7 pm Nina Kirsch Interview with EVA & ADELE

Nina Kirsch: With your numerous staged public appearances in the art world and your subsequent media

presence, it would be easy to get the impression that appearing as a living art work is the

main part of EVA & ADELE’s artistic work. In fact, however, you also paint and draw, and

your painting and drawing oeuvre is an essential, independent section of your work. Is it

possible that the performative work covers up the visual artistic work?

EVA & ADELE: Media presence and the dissemination of our picture are conceptual work, just as our smile

is a work of art. At the same time, we are photo artists, painters, video artists, graphic artists,

communicators, costume designers, make-up artists, sculptors, performance artists. All of

these “professions” merge together in the gesamtkunstwerk, and they all orbit like satellites

around the same center: EVA & ADELE. We regard the different artistic expressions that are

inextricably linked as a whole, as one.

Naturally one sometimes covers up another, and the facets of this are as rich and abundant

as the work itself. There are people who have never experienced us in person, but are

intimately acquainted with every conceptual drawing from our first museum catalogue CUM

(Sprengel Museum Hanover 1997). Others have watched us from a distance for years and

then suddenly newly discover us in conversation. This game of self-presentation makes it

possible for us to open new doors and learn again and again. We make use of all media and

invent new ones as well: the “Olympics of Walking in High-Heeled Shoes”, for example, is

the product of an altered artistic praxis, a way of thinking not previously covered.

NK: For the exhibition in Lentos you are designing a large wall for the first time with over 200

works on paper – works of different techniques, sizes and dates of creation. Is it possible to

read a development of your oeuvre from the wall? Where did the idea of conjoining all these

works on paper come from?

E&A: The idea of the 12-meter long drawing installation is a montage, a film with cuts from

sections of time and sections of images, a road movie. Most of the pages were created

during our travels over the years. Especially when we are traveling, drawing is our way of

withdrawing from public view and at the same time a way of exploring what is strange and

alien inside us through what is externally strange and alien.

What this basically involves is a “performative installation”, which makes the drawings

tangible in the sense of a simultaneity of theatrical appearance in everyday life and in

museum institutions.

NK: You use the term “performative installation” in a completely new way. Whereas exhibition

objects from other artists can often be seen as relics of their previous performances, your

works bear witness to a retreat from public view into the studio. Is this process generally a

component of your performance?

E&A: We take all the experiences we collect in public with us into the studio; the studio is a kind of

laboratory, where things are analyzed, dissected and conjoined. With the term “performative

installation” we refer to the expansion of the term performance: life as work, work as life.

A classical performance has a beginning and an end. It is announced, usually documented

by an institution or by the artists, and the material immediately goes into circulation, into the

market. EVA & ADELE, on the other hand, are EVA & ADELE. Around the clock: every day,

every week, every month, every year; not only in public, but also in the studio.

NK: Your most recent works – small format drawings that have never been exhibited before – will

be presented in the middle of the wall as the center of the installation. Unlike your earlier

works, these are not based on pictures of you. What do these pages deal with and why have

you chosen new motifs?

E&A: Perceiving, feeling and thinking, artistic autonomy, the universe of individual perception are

expressed in the new motifs. The small format ink drawings revolve around the theme of

vanitas. There are erotic depictions of the human body and depictions of angels, all of it a

journey through both art history and the culture of fetishes and porn. The letters spelling out

EVA & ADELE in pink are concept, logo and authorship.

NK: The EVA & ADELE logo – the two heads together with their outline forming a heart – is found

as a signature on many of your works. Yet it also appears in the inside lining of your specially

tailored clothing or your VW camper that accompanies you on your travels. How did you

come up with the idea of developing a logo and using it in advertising as a trademark?

E&A: We developed the logo in 1992. It is to be seen as a symbol for our decision to live and work

as an artist couple. It was intended as a trademark from the beginning, demonstrating

protection and assertion of a new gender self-awareness. For the heart-head logo introduces

the self-fiction and self-definition of gender. In our artistic work the logo is always a reference

to the living gesamtkunstwerk: EVA & ADELE.

NK: Many of the pictures first become intelligible to the viewer at a second look. With their small

formats, the intricacy of the drawings and the distortion of certain objects, the motifs seem

like secret messages. Are they actually to be understood as such?

E&A: The drawings are a humorous game that holds secrets and mysteries, or that also points out

contradictions, thus opening up a complex field of associations.

NK: Another feature of the new drawings are the lace borders: a frame that has something

playful, lascivious and dainty about it at the same time.

E&A: Borders are like lingerie, they cover and seduce. We have a whole repertoire of

undergarments available to us: for every visible performance costume there is also this

hidden, invisible part.

NK: Sexuality is repeatedly addressed in your pictures, for example through the portrayal of

sexual organs – especially male phalluses. On the other hand, as art figures without an

unequivocal gender, you also transport something asexual. How can that be reconciled?

E&A: “Man has the phallus, woman is the phallus.” (Jacques Lacan)

The appearance of EVA & ADELE is a manifesto of the self-staging of gender. The first

Wings performance for documenta IX in 1992 consisted of pink wings in fetishist vinyl, black

seamed stockings, high-heeled shoes, heads shaved like a phallus, and glamorous make-up.

With this performance we posited the self-designation “Hermaphrodite Twins in Art” for the

first time. If we are perceived on the other hand as asexual, that could be due to reservations

on the part of the media and the viewers.

NK: Biografische Skulptur N° 9, House of Futuring is part of the exhibition in Lentos. This is a

walk-in space, where the walls consist of paintings that originated before the shared period of

EVA & ADELE. Can the use of these canvases be seen as a way of working through your

(pre-) past?

E&A: Yes, in EVA & ADELE’s time machine there were the 151 canvases that form the house. We

painted over all the canvases after we met, demonstrating where we were headed. On each

canvas we painted the word “FUTURING” and added eyes and mouths from the EVA &

ADELE logo on the backs. This act of transubstantiation resulted in the Biografische Skulptur

N° 9, House of Futuring.

NK: All of your canvases are characterized by a material multi-layeredness. Multiple levels that

can be distinguished according to form, color, technique and material suggest both a spatial

depth and a depth in the subject matter. Is this an intentional product of working over them

multiple times, or do the works develop in an unforeseen working process?

E&A: The major portion of the canvases exhibited in Lentos belong to the ensemble Transformer-

Performer, a time accumulator that overlays a dense interweaving of multiple layers of time

and meaning on top of one another through painting, following the principle of the

palimpsest.

The double heads interwoven into the paintings expands EVA & ADELE into performative

space and back again to the image plane. This can be seen in both the painting sense and

the performative sense as a reciprocal process of “pull and push”.

NK: Coming from the future is probably much easier for artists than coming from the past, since

there is no comparison or categorization in art history. This guarantees the uniqueness of

EVA & ADELE. Is that the background for the idea of “FUTURING”?

E&A: On the contrary! It is harder to come from the future, because society trusts in and is

dependent on references. With the artistic positioning “Coming out of the Future” we entered

the field of the greatest risk. For us, coming from the future means living the absolute

present.

NK: A female artist was not recognized by society 100 years ago, 50 years later then mostly only

in connection with a male partner. Today society is ready for homosexual artist couples like

Gilbert & George or Pierre & Gilles. As EVA & ADELE – appearing as female artists but not

revealing your true gender – you are among the most famous and successful artists couples

in the world. What is your view of this development? Can there be a further step in the

development of artist couples?

E&A: Gender is a social construct, which would designate EVA & ADELE as male & female by

birth. The self-invention of the same-sex pair EVA & ADELE, which we introduced into

societal reality, is at the beginning of the 21st century. With this vision we are at the start of a

new development of artist couples and of authorship.

NK: On the one hand, anything is possible in art today, but on the other your dazzling

appearance sometimes meets with intolerance as well. Through their obvious differentness

EVA & ADELE create distance, but at the same time the impression arises that you are

omnipresent and constantly available as an “art product”. How do you see this discrepancy?

E&A: As a living art work that breaks taboos, we operate in public space without protection, without

guidelines and without etiquette. Insecurity can provoke aggression and intolerance on the

part of the viewer. In these cases it is sometimes hard to find the right language to establish

a level of communication, in order to avoid aggression, but most of all to set a dialogue in

motion. In these cases there is no camera there to document these kinds of crisis situations.

This participatory process frequently takes us to the limits of our own actions as part of the

work. At the same time, winning over the audience requires that the artistic effort consumes

our performance, a precise choreography on our part. From these self-staged settings we

derive potential, findings and material for our artistic work.

NK: With the slogan “Wherever we are is museum” you express that the historical, traditional

institution of the museum is not necessary for exhibiting or being able to see art. Yet in the

meantime, you now regularly have exhibitions in museums yourselves. How does that fit

together?

E&A: That’s a misunderstanding. The slogan doesn’t express that the traditional institution of the

“museum” isn’t needed. “Wherever we are is museum” expresses theatrical engagement

outside the institution of the museum. Through the appearance of EVA & ADELE museum is

globally invented beyond all boundaries. The unexpected appearance in the most diverse

locations – in a forest, in an airplane, at a gas station, in the mountains, by the sea – is the

concept.

NK: Goldenes Manifest is also to be seen in Lentos: gilded panels with your slogans and the EVA

& ADELE logo. Do the slogans in total consequently form a manifesto, which is imbued with

a special value through the color gold? The manifesto as art work?

E&A: Yes.

NK: Why do you use body measurements as a biography? Normally this information is listed on

the setcards of photo models to indicate a perfect body. Are body measurements therefore

the most important thing in a woman’s life? Can one reduce a woman’s biography to this?

Aren’t you supporting the superficialness of our times in this way?

E&A: This is not about the body measurements of a woman, but rather about the measurement or

dimensions of a living sculpture. It is a stance that indicates the use of our own bodies in the

work and asserts a position in contemporary art as different and expansive.

NK: Every artist has their own special abilities. In the case of an artist couple, preferences and

talents that are inevitably different come together. How do you handle your collaboration? Is

there something like a division of labor?

E&A: We don’t publicize any attribution of individual achievements in our collaboration. Naturally

there are individual achievements and especially individual decisions: on the whole it is a

very complex, complicated and differentiated interplay that flows into the work of EVA &

ADELE.

NK: You talk about “beginning after the end of art”. What is the end of art for EVA & ADELE?

E&A: The beginning of “FUTURING”.