“With and without title” is the name of the latest art exhibition at the art club of Leimen, including the two young artists Georg Raab and Joachim Hirling from Karlsruhe. Common to both of the artists is a special relationship to texts - whether under, about or in a picture, the visualization of the verbal or the verbalization of the visual, wherefore the pictures of both artists can be considered pictures made up of texts or rather captions (Textbilder bzw. Bildtexte), that of course, only at first sight, appear to be very different from one another.
Georg Raab for example displays a serial titled “picture description”, which are reprographies/blue prints, that have been comprehensively written on/overwritten with acrylic and paint brush by the artist. In this case the artist used the most famous photos of the 20th century, as the sinking of the Titanic, the first man on the moon, the murder of John F. Kennedy etc. – Icons of the modern age, that once moved the world. It is this – the myth, the solemnness and sentimental kitsch – that Raab wants to destroy by overwriting the titled pictures with a demonstratively factual, disillusioning text, that duplicates each picture and at the same time divides it.
Disillusioning banality certainly is a central concept/idea of/in the in the miscellaneous producing of the conceptual artist Georg Raab. He also parodied his own personal, private daily routine/everyday life by looking closely at an existential question a person asks itself every single morning of its life: “What will I wear today?” Raab finds his solution in combining all of his clothes in every possible variation and photographing this everyday fashion show as a dressing help.
Another serial of Raab engages in trivial indoor plants, the silent roommates that – despite their lovely blossoming and the included call for careful/good handling in the care instructions, cannot cast out solitude/loneliness. And solitude is the topic of another intelligent serial that presents itself in form of embroidery on ordinary kitchen towels. Concealed behind this is/lies a sort of mathematical – geometrical text: displayed as signs are movement lines that result from pressing a push-button telephone. Every telephone number however is outdated, the answer is always: “the number you have dialled is unavailable”.