Linda Klösel / kidnapped / digital catalogue KW.I
In the exhibition Kidnapped , Manfred Grübl leads the visitors into the gallery through a system of sluice gate type doors. The visitor has to cross three doors which close automatically and remain shut. The doors are only opened at the end of the presentation/performance/event by three security guards enabeling the visitors to leave the gallery. This perfectly stages the notion of kidnapping and makes it perceptible. Is Kidnapped an attempt to process? Given the exhibition setting in which the displayed works are types of equipment. 31 loudspeakers, arranged in a puzzle, play the corresponding names of the loudspeakers in varying sequences. (including series numbers/type..) Bundled light, frames a surface which draws stripes on the floor in the bassement of the gallery. The room and the persons in the light are scanned slowly and evenly. The audience become participants in this artwork. The photo-montage of the russian journalist Anna Stepanowna Politkowskaja, who was found murdered in the lobby of her Moscow apartment block in 2006 dominates the main space. She was one of the few journalists who constantly reported contrary to the official position of the regional crisis during the war in Chechenia. Her portrait appears behind spezial police mirrored glass. Manfred Grübls varied approach to a topic is also reveiled in his complex conceptual drawings.