Marc Da Costa interviews the ever dynamic Johannes Grenzfurthner, founder of monochrom - Part 2.

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This is second of three interviews with Grenzfurthner. This time round we focus on monochrom's art intervention at the Sao Paulo Art Biennial, Sao Paulo (Brazil) in 2002. In response to being asked as representatives of the Republic of Austria, they created the persona of Georg P. Thomann, an irascible, controversial (and completely fictitious) artist of longstanding fame and renown. Through the implementation of this ironic mechanism, the biography of the non-existent artist was also included in the catalogue. The interview explores the reasons behind such an activist endeavour, touching on various themes including questions around representation and the commodity value of the artists.

Grenzfurthner has collaborated with groups such as ubermorgen, Billboard Liberation Front, Esel and Mego (label). Grenzfurthner writes for various online/print magazines and radio stations (e.g. ORF, Telepolis, Boing Boing). Grenzfurthner has served on a number of art juries (e.g. Steirischer Herbst, Graz). He holds a professorship for art theory and art practice at the University of Applied Sciences, Graz, Austria and is a lecturer at University of Arts and Industrial Design in Linz, Austria.

Since 1993, the Monochrom members have devoted themselves to the grey zones where systems intersect: the art (market), politics, economics, pop, gaiety, vanity, good clean fanaticism, crisis, language, culture, self-content, identity, utopia, mania and despair. The technique underlying Monochrom's work is that of being and working in the fields of Pop/avant-garde, theory/reflection, interventionism/politics, gaiety/lust/tragedy, (self-)configuration/mystification. The project Monochrom pushes into and beyond these fields is, 'networking' events, people, possibilities, material, impetus and identities." (Zdenka Badovinac, Moderna Galerija Ljubljana)


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