Statement

What are old photo albums actually other than testimonial picture books that tell stories through their chronological collection of
photographs or allow associations. The artist Manfred Kirschner recognized the strategy of this narrative method early on, in his
student days, and used it to create life stories and stories of his protagonists. The fictional vita of an American artist in the 1960s
and other stories „told“ in photo albums, in which he places collages with comments instead of photos. Once you have accepted
this change, you are quickly immersed in the logic of a parallel sphere, a fantastic, imagined biography that wrestles with reality.
From a time when photography still surrounded the aura of the authentic. It was in the early 1990s, with the onset of digitization
and the reversibility of image and photography processes, that Kirschner began his serial collage stories and photo albums. Now
he has presented two printed books. A multi-part collage story „Going Crazy in East Germany – Rügen mon Amour“ and
„Cuddling with Paper – All You Need Is Lost.“ The first book uses a light, humorous tone to tell the turbulent travel adventure of
Harald Baumeister, a Berlin artist who, disappointed by his friends, travels to the Baltic Sea in search of meaning. The book is
oriented around collaged landscape images that function like „film sets“ for the artist. Through his technique, Kirschner associates
a fantastic, German pictorial history in which fiction, the past, and the present merge. Thus Harald Baumeister appears like an
alter ego of artists in crisis, who makes a tour de force that should lead him to art and ends in life and friendship. In the second
book, „Schmusen mit Papier,“ the hero of the plot Ytong travels to Bremerhaven to represent Harald at an art exhibition in the
harbor. After setting up the exhibition, Ytong explores the city and meets, among others, the young, mute „Goethe“, who
describes to him in letters a gay love story from 1860. Schmusen mit Papier deals not only with an absurdly funny portrayal of the
art business, exclusion and loss in systemic capitalism, but also with the power of human communication, friendship and
solidarity. Manfred Kirschner is a freelance artist and curator. (aka Lydia Karstadt/ Crystal Ball, Berlin) He follows a
neostructuralist approach and works interdisciplinary. His visual and performative work is characterized by diversity and
crossover. Groups of works are intertwined by media or connected by presentation. Poems are read and eaten, (Edible Poems
and Drawings at Kunstverein Bremerhaven 1996) drawings are installed as bodies in space in living rooms, blank sheets of paper
are distributed in a promotion, collages are passed off as authentic photos in a slide show, critiques are sung in front of an
audience. One always encounters voids, transgressions, displacements, and ambivalence. There is no effective recognition, no
branding in his art. He literally acts himself out, sings, writes, paints, creates performance actions, concepts and also always
collaborates with other people/artists. His works are often inscribed with the question of the responsibility and conditions of the
social role of the artist as a producer. Rather, what other possibilities do we have in the work, in the creation of art together with
the recipients, the people. Kirschner addresses this in performances, videos and installations in combination with drawing,
painting and collage. He gives workshops in collage, silkscreen and performance work and also works as a curator and exhibition
organizer.“ Excerpt: text by Kempner, Berlin 2022