In the meantime, the Corona restrictions are a thing of the past. In Alex Wissel's Düsseldorf backyard studio, however, a few memories of the tough lockdown times still lean against the wall. For days, weeks, months, the artist had drawn in these four walls – not images, but texts for a current publication. Letter by letter copied down, with pencil on paper. Essays by various authors that deal with Wissel's work served as templates. "A text takes an average of a month if I draw eight hours a day – one week per page."
So much patience was hardly attributed to Wissel. Yet, he has been harboring the plan for quite some time now to make the text production itself a topic, as he says. The artist finds particularly exciting, "how the value of the work is enhanced by texts – the text as symbolic capital that makes the work more valuable."
Wissel is active in many media – and even beyond. But drawing, he explains, is his most important artistic practice. A lengthy manual activity through which he can approach his subject. In this case, he has worn out countless pencils and numerous light bulbs in the overhead projector, which was a great help to him while manually copying the printed pages. Wissel is not yet 40, but there is already quite a lot to write – or copy – about his life and work. As an artist, he has tried various roles: club operator, for example, actor, or screenwriter.
Wissel's biography is also rather unusual: first primary school, then secondary school, finally vocational school. He actually wanted to become a "book seller" but ultimately decided on studying art in Düsseldorf with Rosemarie Trockel. From the hole that many graduates fall into after their academy time, Wissel quickly catapulted himself out and landed in his "Oktoberbar" at Worringer Platz in Düsseldorf. "I have always had the dream of opening a bar." Together with fellow artists, he ran the place. Two of the three bowling alleys in the basement were repurposed. One room hosted exhibitions, the other was a concert and lecture hall, and the third remained for bowlers.
Every evening, Wissel offered a different program – it was well received. So well that after the fantastic October of 2010, he wanted to continue. In the same place at the "Single Club," which made a big impression in Düsseldorf: The club as a stage where something different happened every month. Concerts, lectures, parties, always lasting 24 hours. Additionally, artists reinvented everything each time – from the bathroom to the waitstaff's costume. A total work of art that also included bands formed for the occasion and handmade posters. After a year, the magic was over, but a film remained. Filmed by the already well-known director Jan Bonny from "Tatort" or "Polizeiruf," who still plays a significant role in Wissel's work to this day.
Bonny was also involved in the next project. "Rheingold," as the title of the project states, began with cinematic sketches and went on air as a prominently cast web series commissioned by the Berliner Volksbühne. It is about the Düsseldorf art consultant Helge Achenbach, who was caught in profitable frauds in 2014. The art consultant had covered dollar invoices with small euro signs and later declared these forgeries in court as artistic collages.
Using the Achenbach case as a hook, Wissel and Bonny move through the Federal Republic of the past 25, 30 years in their film. They track the development of Joseph Beuys with his dictum "every person is an artist" up to the "Ich-AG" of the Gerhard Schröder era. "We describe how the ideas of the 68ers evolved from the art scene to neoliberal reality." Wissel's stage design is also fitting: an adaptation of Beuys' Capri battery represented the sun and a replica of Ottmar Hörl's Euro sculpture hung as the moon in the backdrop. In between, Wissel flitted as the ghost of Joseph Beuys, dressed in a fishing vest with a golden face, through the history.
He enjoys the masquerade. The artist has been seen in a showmaster look, with a pocket square in a tailored jacket. Or as a contaminated old man: in a brown robe with white spray-painted hair, with disgusting sores all over his skin. However, on this day, Wissel is very much himself, and his outfit is somewhat inconspicuous: slippers, jeans, shirt, and round metal-framed glasses.
The artist is currently teaching painting as a visiting professor in Münster and is also active in various archives, where he primarily investigates the historical roots of the New Right. He has deeply delved into this topic and enjoys lecturing on the artist festivals of the 19th century: real major events that became increasingly nationalistic and racist in connection with the founding of the German Empire in 1871. Wissel quickly gains momentum, and one must hurry to keep up with him.
Many of the now highly visited monuments originally emerged from plaster and cardboard as decorations for these festivals and were later immortalized in bronze. A prominent example: the Kyffhäuser Monument in Thuringia, interestingly used as a backdrop for regular meetings by the völkisch-nationalist "Flügel" of the AfD.
Wissel has many more such stories up his sleeve, effortlessly spanning connections from Bismarck, whose myth and the similarly named herrings, through the World Cup summer fairy tale, to the lateral thinkers. He was able to realize some exhibitions on the topic before the Corona break. At the end of 2019, for example, in the Düsseldorf collection Philara, where Wissel intertwined nationalist historical images from then and now in drawings and installations and, as an ironic addition, presented deceptively realistic German home cooking: red cabbage, sauerbraten, potato salad... - served on plates like in a local restaurant.
Almost at the same time, Wissel also appeared at the Düsseldorf Art Association at Grabbeplatz, whose questionable naming history the artist examined in a site-specific installation. It is important to know that this square has been named after the poet highly revered by the National Socialists only since 1936. Huge plague boils made of papier-mâché had been pasted by Wissel on the wall of the Art Association as a representative for the "brown plague". There is never irony with Wissel, who still stores the mega boils in his Düsseldorf studio. "One must know the past," says Wissel, "to understand the present."
