Solo

Sculpture, part of the project B2B by Jan-Holger Mauss 1996/2011
Polystyrol, paper, test tubes; 35 x 35 x 210 cm (incl. pedestal); 2011

The work is part of the exhibition "(Self)-Portrait" at "Schwules Museum" in Berlin, open till 16th January 2012.

“Business to Business” (B2B) initially refers in economics to a shift away from so-called “private clients” or “end consumers” toward business relationships with other companies.

"B2B began in 1996 when the Hamburg-based artist Jan-Holger Mauss responded to a work by Eva Grubinger: she had made available a pattern for a “net bikini” for download on a website. Mauss sewed this bikini, but he did not send it to the artist to obtain a “certificate of authenticity.” Instead, he used it for his own performance: he offered himself as a model in the net bikini for the works of other artists – that is, he translated the principle of virtual networking, referenced in the wordplay, back into the real network of his social relationships. His activity focuses on socializing and networking, on establishing new contacts and expanding existing ones, and on everything necessary to make collaboration productive, successful, and sustainable. He is not only a model but simultaneously an initiator and self-representer of reproducibility, an opportunistic maker, and a creativity scout. What takes precedence in these professional relationships? The art? The business? The social life of the artists within their ever-expanding networks?"
Kai van Eikels, 2004

When Jan-Holger Mauss asked me in 1996 if I wanted to participate in his project, I was particularly intrigued by the question: how do I deal with the form of the portrait? I was less interested in individual depiction than in the portrait as a projection surface. What does individuality mean today, when we simultaneously understand ourselves as biochemical – and therefore interchangeable – material? The result was an object that stands somewhere between a scientific instrument, a reliquary, and an allegory.

In 1996, I found no satisfactory answer to the question, “How do I create the actual portrait?” Thus, the work remained in the state of the model, but it served as inspiration for further projects. For example, the form of the object above the bar in the Le Royal Meridien hotel in Hamburg, as well as the motif of embryos on the pool walls of the same hotel, derive from this model. In this sense, the reworking for the exhibition “(Self)-Portrait” in the fall of 2011 was particularly exciting for me. In addition to altering the proportions, concentrating the motifs more, and using the reflective surface for distortions, I decided above all to place the sculpture on a very tall, slender pedestal so that it could be viewed from a steep upward angle. This removed its character as a small-scale object, making it much more spatially engaging and explicitly including the viewer’s perspective.

Wolf von Waldow, 2011

By now, more than 120 artists with very diverse working approaches have participated in this project. Examples of further works include:

Bernhard Prinz, 2000 Fotografiie	Mark Lüders, 2000 Fotografie, bemalt	Cony Theis, 2004 Malerei auf der eigenen Haut	Ursula Döbereiner, 2004 Digitaldruck	Kati Barath, 2004 Malerei

Katia Kelm, 2010 Knetgummi	Jochen Twelker, 2000 Aquarell	Anne Berning, 2004 Metall, bemalt

Gabriele Brasch, Scheerenschnitt		Sonja Ahlhäuser, 2004 Maripan, Puderzucker