A com­plete cat­a­logue of our work the MoMA didn’t reject

BAS­T­IAN HANSL ​“ba573” as he calls him­self, born in the east-Ger­man cap­i­tal of 80s rave scene, Kulm­bach, Hansl cre­ates per­for­mances, inter­ac­tive art and media art. By study­ing sign process­es, sig­ni­fi­ca­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion, Hansl makes works that can be seen as self-por­traits. Some­times they appear idio­syn­crat­ic and quirky, at oth­er times, they seem typ­i­cal by-prod­ucts of super­abun­dance and anoth­er time, you’re not sure if you’re look­ing at a work of Hansl or Hansl him­self. His per­for­mances are sat­u­rat­ed with obvi­ous­ness, men­tal iner­tia, clichés and bad jokes. They ques­tion the coer­cive­ness that is derived from the more pro­found mean­ing and the super­fi­cial aes­thet­ic appear­ance of an image or even a per­son. By par­o­dy­ing mass behav­ior and exag­ger­at­ing cer­tain for­mal aspects inher­ent to our con­tem­po­rary soci­ety, he makes work that gen­er­ates diverse mean­ings. Asso­ci­a­tions col­lide; Space becomes time and lan­guage becomes image. His works ques­tion the con­di­tions of appear­ance of an image in the con­text of con­tem­po­rary visu­al cul­ture in which images, rep­re­sen­ta­tions and ideas nor­mal­ly func­tion. By apply­ing abstrac­tion, he cre­ates intense non-per­son­al moments mas­ter­ful­ly cre­at­ed by means of rules and omis­sions, accep­tance and refusal, lur­ing the view­er round and round in cir­cles. His works doesn’t ref­er­ence recog­nis­able form. The results are decon­struct­ed to the extent that mean­ing is shift­ed and pos­si­ble inter­pre­ta­tion becomes mul­ti­fac­eted. Bas­t­ian ​“ba573” Hansl cur­rent­ly lives and works in Bingen.