Henry Flynt. Activities 1959-

A provocative exhibition at the ZKM | Media Museum

BY JOHANNA SCHIRA

For the first time since the beginning of his work as an artist, Henry Flynt has been honored with a solo exhibition. The exhibition represents a challenge to the very foundations of art institutions. Due to his numerous and diverse activities, the concept artist, musician, mathematician and philosopher is to be considered as a key, but also controversial, figure of the North American avant-garde scene.

With the exhibition »Henry Flynt. Activities 1959-«, the ZKM | Karlsruhe presents an overview of Flynt’s work, which radically questioned art as a social phenomenon. He sees himself as provocateur; visitors are immediately confronted at the entrance to the exhibition with the lettering “NO MORE ART!” However, one of the works strikes the visitor on a tour through the exhibition space that seems provocative due to a lack of understanding. Thus, while at a first glance the work “This sentence is in French” seems, quite evidently, a joke, it is far rather an expression of extreme skepticism towards one’s own language and its effects. This work is exemplary of the term “Concept Art”, which Flynt coined, a form which understands itself as an art the materials of which are concepts.