Walking Through Baghdad with a Buster Keaton Face [electronic resource].

edition fink 2009

Open access content

Thomas Galler takes a conceptual approach in his wide-ranging and versatile oeuvre. His artistic production, which includes video works, objects, installations and photographs, is based on the use of existing materials, such as text, image, film or sound documents. Galler’s works are created through a multi-stage process of searching, analysing, selecting and re-contextualising the chosen material. When an object or a document is transplanted from the everyday order of things to the realm of art defined by its own laws, there is a shift in meaning. “Thomas Galler works with ‘found objects’” is what is always said about his work. Yet it is important to put the term into perspective, as this is not about things that the artist happens to find effortlessly, like an umbrella lost on a train. The objects are more in the nature of “sought objects”, in other words, the findings of an active search, the results of study and research. The artist is guided by specific questions and concerns, and looks for documents that represent his work-related themes. The essence of Galler’s work draws on wide-ranging global issues. His personal environment is rarely the source of his work, which has its origins in vastly different parts of the world and is usually linked to contemporary or historical flashpoints around the globe: the Red Army Faction (RAF), African child soldiers, Iraq, the Middle East, Vietnam or the Second World War. The artist is widely travelled and has spent time working in Paris, New York and Cairo. These experiences are reflected in his work OHNE TITEL (UNTITLED, 2008), for example, a wall relief made of Egyptian military berets. Therefore, to some extent, the works are definitely inspired by indirect experiences, but Galler’s direct experiences as a media consumer play a more significant role. In this connection, he is an out-and-out product of his time, a representative of the medialised modern era…
https://www.librarystack.org/walking-through-baghdad-with-a-buster-keaton-face/?ref=unknown

Art criticism
Geopolitics
War
Military art and science

Text

Thomas Galler
Madeleine Schuppli
Georg Rutishauser
Margrit Tröhler
Hilde Teerlinck
Ritu Khanna
Franz Scherer