07.08.–19.09.1999

Since 1996, Andreas Siekmann has been developing series of drawings which he subsumes thematically under the title "From: Limited Liability Company".

The pictures show how economic power relations affect urban public space. According to Siekmann, this space is increasingly becoming subjected to the interests of private investors and the political framework influenced by them. Marginal groups are often excluded from central spaces; the exclusive areas thus created are secured by employing surveillance measures. An indirect instrument of control utilised by this urban policy is the development of model images with specific contents. With his drawings, the artist wants to intervene in this production of image transfers.

The ca. 200 drawings can be divided into groups, each examining a certain aspect of the topic. By supplementing each other content-wise and by maintaining a formal unity, they indicate that they belong together. All pictures are drawn on sheets of paper in DIN-A-4 landscape format using water-colour, felt-tip pens, and paint markers. Their detailed compositions possess a strong narrative element. In relating to each other, the series appear as a picture story.

All drawings contain the motif of a pair of blue jeans. These "empty jeans" sit, stand or walk, as if being worn by imaginary persons, surrounded by the city with its typical streets and structures, its businesses and offices. It is solely the specific posture of the jeans and their context that characterise their absent wearers. The specific manner in which the jeans (wearers) are positioned in public space is thus emphasised.

The titles of the individual series of drawings indicate their contents. "Logic of the Apparatuses", for example, displays situations and places in which the jeans (wearers) are not allowed; their exclusion is monitored by security guards. In these pictures, a divided society is shown, in which public space does not possess the same meaning for everyone. "ABMachine" presents unemployed jeans that are integrated via job-creation measures by the employment office. The drawings, however, show the surface of a computer monitor, thus displaying a reality of their own. It is only the computer monitor showing educational programmes of the employment office through which the jeans are transformed. Using the jeans as protagonist in his drawings, the artist visualises certain social relations in everyday life. His jeans wearers are socially deprived groups excluded from society. According to Siekmann, a simple principle applies to them: no employment, no income, no consumption: capitals inability to reify them has created "uncharted territories" in public space, which are increasingly being accepted.

References to various types of jeans-wearers inherent in the drawings allow Siekmann to reflect upon the social history of the jeans: their development from the former workers' pants to the representative sign of youth culture and finally to a socially acceptable piece of clothing. The pants' ability to transform thus seems to contain social options. For Siekmann, the jeans become a sign of this ambivalence. The empty jeans themselves lack substance, they make no argument. Basically, they can represent all different public areas and therefore also various political conditions which the jeans wearers may be in a position to influence.

The utilisation of a cartoon-style, almost naive picture language is intentionally populistic and possesses easy readability. His works make a political claim. Siekmann develops a picture language he uses to intervene in current debates on the transformation of urban space through economic restructuring. Drawing, as a medium, is regarded as an adequate artistic means to work with reality without illustrating it.

At Portikus, the different series of drawings are presented as picture strips on tables and partially on the walls. The specific arrangement of the tables refers to connections and crossing-points of the drawings. Visitor have the opportunity of viewing the series of drawings by taking a seat on wheeled office chairs.

Siekmann also directly participates in the production of image transfers in public space by displaying two picture motifs of his drawings on large advertising billboards in the city of Frankfurt.