Artist
Jörg Schlick
Austrian, 1951–2005
Jörg Schlick was an Austrian artist. 1 work is cataloged here, principally at Museum of Modern Art. Jörg Schlick was born in Graz.
Overview
Jörg Schlick (1951 – 29 December 2005) was an Austrian conceptual artist, writer, painter, musician and curator. Based in Graz, he worked across painting, drawing, photography, performance art, film, video art, stage design, music and text. He was a founding figure of the artists' association Lord Jim Lodge, edited its magazine Sonne Busen Hammer, and repeatedly incorporated the group's signet and motto Keiner hilft keinem into his work. Critics and institutions have discussed Schlick's work in relation to appropriation, seriality, humour, institutional critique, branding and artist mythology. Later critical and institutional accounts have emphasised that his public image as a provocateur sometimes obscured the formal and conceptual range of his work.
Life and career
Schlick was born in Graz in 1951. From the 1980s onward he developed a wide-ranging artistic practice that resisted assignment to a single medium or style. ORF Steiermark described him after his death as an internationally known Graz artist whose work repeatedly formulated provocative socio-political statements. His work included painting, drawing, collage, photography, serial works, short film, video, performance, music, ballet choreography, stage design and writing. Museum Joanneum notes that Schlick was less concerned with the choice of medium than with the result of the artistic act. Schlick was active in the Graz art scene and worked with institutions and festivals including Forum Stadtpark and steirischer herbst. From 1996 to 2001 he taught as a guest professor at the Graz University of Technology, and in 2003 he held a teaching assignment at FH Joanneum. He collaborated with or developed projects alongside figures including Günter Brus, Wolfgang Bauer and Martin Kippenberger. In 2018, Belvedere 21 in Vienna presented a focused exhibition on the collaboration between Schlick and Günter Brus, showing works that grew out of Schlick's spiral nebula drawings and Brus's texts.
Lord Jim Loge
Schlick was a founding figure of the Lord Jim Loge, an artists' association and conceptual project connected with Wolfgang Bauer, Martin Kippenberger, Albert Oehlen and others. Sources variously describe Schlick as a founder or founding member of the group, whose recurring signet was Sonne Busen Hammer and whose motto was Keiner hilft keinem. Schlick edited Sonne Busen Hammer, the central organ of the Lord Jim Loge. The group's logo and motto were used as recurring marks across his work. Museum Joanneum describes this branding as central to Schlick's public recognition, while also noting that the reputation of the Loge as a "secret society" and Schlick's reputation as an agitator could obstruct a view of the works themselves. The artist and the Loge pursued the idea of making the group's logo better known than Coca-Cola, a strategy that critics have interpreted as both absurdist self-branding and conceptual material. In Frieze, Moritz Scheper argued that the fiction of an operating lodge allowed Schlick to gather diverse activities under one banner, and that the dissemination of the signet was not simply an end in itself but material for new artistic combinations. Shortly before Schlick's death, the rights connected with the Lord Jim Loge were handed over to the Vienna-based art group monochrom. Museum Joanneum states that the rights were sold for a symbolic price at Galerie Bleich-Rossi in 2005 and that monochrom purchased the brand and copyrights in 2006.
Work and reception
Schlick's works often used found signs, logos, slogans and institutional imagery. Museum Joanneum describes his work as using social and political power structures, image propaganda, masks and signs to question institutions, value systems and concepts of art. Critics have emphasised the ambivalence between Schlick's cultivated persona and the formal intelligence of his work. Reviewing the 2018 exhibition Back in Cologne at Galerie Nagel Draxler, Moritz Scheper wrote in Frieze that, after Schlick's death, his compositions and "conceptual sharpness" became more visible without the "smokescreen" of his transgressive public persona. Scheper discussed works such as Die drei Lichter der Veronika and noted Schlick's use of tape, broken glass, collage, signs and the Lord Jim Loge motto as a cryptic system of writing. Schlick also produced serial photographic motifs, including flowers and everyday architectural objects, which gained new visual effects through combination in groups of four. Die Presse described his serial works as circling large themes such as Freud's superego, Bach's fugues and Martin Heidegger. In 1996, Schlick attracted public attention with a poster for the steirischer herbst festival depicting a urinating man. His practice also repeatedly played with masculinity, parody and exclusion. A 2015 Frieze review of his Graz retrospective discussed the Lord Jim Loge as a parodic men's club and connected Schlick's work to broader questions of masculinity, irony and artistic legacy.
Exhibitions and collections
Schlick exhibited in museums and galleries in Austria and abroad. Museum Joanneum states that he exhibited in institutions including the Centre Pompidou in 1993, Museum Ludwig in Cologne in 1996, and the Musée d'art moderne et contemporain in Geneva in 2000. His works are represented in collections including the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the Neue Galerie Graz and MAMCO, the Musée d'art moderne et contemporain in Geneva. ORF Steiermark reported that the Museum of Modern Art in New York acquired a series of drawings by Schlick. In 2015, Künstlerhaus, Halle für Kunst & Medien in Graz mounted a major retrospective of Schlick's work as part of steirischer herbst. The exhibition was organised near the tenth anniversary of his death and presented works from different phases of his career, including collaborations with artistic companions. Die Presse described the exhibition as an extensive retrospective. A monograph and catalogue raisonné, Jörg Schlick. Monographie und Werkverzeichnis / Catalogue Raisonné 1973–2005, was later published by Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König. According to HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark, the publication was based on Schlick's estate and numerous loans, brought together works from all phases of his career, and included his first catalogue raisonné.
Awards
Schlick received a prize of honour from the City of Graz in 1997 and the province of Styria's award for visual art in 2004.
Death
Schlick died in Graz on 29 December 2005. ORF Steiermark reported that he died after a serious illness.
Collections represented
Museum