PAW, Karlsruhe
Matt Muir & Miriam Schmitz & Marc Botschen
The curatorial project of PAW for ART-O-RAMA features Matt Muir, Miriam Schmitz, and Marc Botschen. Their positions are interconnected in that they understand the medium they use not merely as a tool, but as an object of critical reflection. In doing so, they contextualize it in a way that reflects its own history and cultural imprint.
Matt Muir explores the nature of art itself: how we perceive it, how we assign value to it, and the absurdity of its existence in a post-internet era.
Miriam Schmitz employs textiles and interiors not just as material, but as carriers of memories and cultural codes. Her work reveals how the material basis of an object is closely linked to its historical and social context. In the process, she uncovers the hidden processes of production and circulation that constitute the object’s medial nature.
Marc Botschen adopts a similarly revealing strategy with photographic means by deconstructing the medium of the image as a bearer of symbols and an ideological instrument. His engagement with photography aims to sharpen the focus on the underlying structures of representation and communication, thereby questioning the medium’s self-perception.
All three artists conceive of the medium as a living, self-reflecting process. They make visible how the history, context, and their own conceptual conditions are inextricably linked with the medium, often calling themselves into question or even driving it to an ad absurdum.
