LANDART - H.J. Bauer


Born 1942 in Homberg / Efze (Germany) Apprenticeship, manager 1 st. study: economics Stays in India and Spain Teacher at a vocational school
2 nd. study: philosophy, history, politics, thesis: The influence of national historical clichés on the writing of local history Various publications, novel: Die Bleiarche (The ark of lead) Performances, 1 st. one-man-show 1992 Landart - projects since 1994 My landart - projects are based on the following items: motivation, source, element, form, tools/materials/objects

Project	Motivation	Field of Event	Element	Form	Tools Materials, Objects
GENESIS 1994-1996	curiosity	philosophy	soil, flowers, grass	writing, shape of a human body	tractor, sowing-machine, seed
MATTIUM II 1997	anxiety	history	stones	-	blue color
BLAUE KIRCHE 1997	rage	history	ice	groundplan of a church	blue color
HIRNWEIDE 2001	apprehension	science politics	grass	shape of a human couple	tractor, scythe and cows
DER AUSFLUG... 2004	hope	genetic engeneering	ice	shape of feet	blue and red color
KAMPF MATTIUM 2004	hope	history	air	different motions	3 aeroplanes, pigeons
ERDLIED 2005	joy	sing	soil, fire	writing and notes	tractors torches, 400 persons
YOGOZEN 2006	hope	psychology	stones on a rock, the Sea	writing	-

The German-Austrian artist Hans-Joachim Bauer goes one step further, however. He brings a gentley expressed but profound moral anger two what he terms "landart".
Landart, he says, is primarily psycological in its impact. It does not make a lasting the landscape itself, only on poepel´s minds and attitudes.

Angela Jeffs, The Japan Times (Tokyo, Japan)

"... It is not for the first time that...
cardrivers watch the mysterious large-scale landart-drawings of the artist... some years ago he invited spectators in a plane to watch - God from the sky - ...and he has always asked new interesting questions ... he presented Jesus! Crossway in a bodybuilding studio and developed a landart - project based on the Cambodien Holocaust ... he was sketching a sunken church on the ice of the lake Edersee ... and commented his landart - project "SULAMITH" with the words: A work concerning the German responsibility for the Holocaust.

Eduard Kopp, Deutsches Allgemeines Sonntagsblatt
(Hamburg)

The German artist Hans-Joachim Bauer had created - in downtown Kuovola - piece of art called TAISTELU (The Fight) Made out of trunks and concrete slabs, was it a part of the exhibition BLUE APPEARS IN SPACE at our museum (we reported). Yesterday night it was totally destroyed with chainssaws and hammers. The police said...

Katariina Hakaniemi, Kouvolan Sanomat (Kouvola, Finnland)

"If you ask me... the artist... knows it quite well how to use provocation. His ambiguities in the project Hirnweide (brainmeadow) was a proof for it.

Those actions drive a thorn into the brain of the spectators. Whether they want it or not, they get involved in an artistic and philosophical discourse.

At first view you think what a foolish action, but it turns out to be very ambigous. The artist is able to cause astonishing correlations with quite simple means ...
In his transistory projects he creates a lasting impression!

Heinz Rohde, Hessische Niedersächsische Allgemeine
(Kassel)

During his stay in Patagonia (Chile) the artist presented his performance: En el cemeterio de los tempanos (In the cemetery of ice) which refers to the melting glaciers worldwide and its consequences.

Gabriel Leiva , Prensa Austral , Puerto Natales ,Chile

In "La Conferencia de Clima" he and a team lassoed a small iceberg with great difficulty and used a motorboat to tow it one kilometer to the Serrano Glacier in O`Higgins National Park, from which it had broken loose. In "KlimaKonferenz 2.0" he exerted immense effort on a stationary bicycle to try and get away from the melting Jökullsarlon Glacier behind him. The absolute inadequacy of these exertions is comic, but only in the darkest sense, standing in as they do for what Bauer sees as humankind´s utter incapacity to do much to hold the progress of climate change.( full text on www.mydocumenta.de)

Lori Waxman (Chikago) 7/21/12 dOCUMENTA (13) Kassel