Johannes Zits - Vermittlungsprozesse von Wünschen
November 7 - December 23, 2008
"If we think about it, we're all of us naked under our clothes". Thus wrote Heinrich Heine in the prudish 19th century. In the meantime, even the revolutionaries from the nineteen sixties have made little change to the social relationship of this naturalistic condition. Nowadays the Internet, more than liberally informs nearly half of the global population about the manifold forms of human nudism and all kinds of sexual proclivities. At the same time the media treats it as a scandal when Janet Jackson presents her surgically modelled image of an udder on the stage at a major sports event.
The Canadian artist Johannes Zits takes a stand on the schizophrenic, ambivalent morals of our modern, two-faced society. A central aspect of Zits` work is its reference to free body culture. Using and combining digital media, photography and video, painting and performance, an iconology is created which converges intimate, indigenous everyday life with the world of modern media.
The exhibition "Vermittlungsprozesse von Wünschen" (Mediation of Desire) presents Zits` latest work as his work from the past few years. On the opening evening visitors are introduced to Zits’ mediation by means of the performance "Performing the Self". And maybe some visitors will even find a newly awakened sense to the words of Johann Aloys Blumenau: "Naked I came into this world, naked I am buried in my grave.; so by existing I have neither won nor lost anything".
Johannes Zits (*1955 in Holland, lives and works in Toronto, Canada) completed his art studies in 1984 at York University, Toronto. Since then his work has been presented in numerous internationally eminent institutions.
Video: documentary of "Performing the Self", performed on Thursday, November 6, 2008
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