Time Out
London, December 10-17 2003


Otto Muehl
T1+2Artspace, East End

Accompanied by a series of prints, four short films feature Otto Muehl and his long-term collaborator Violaine Roussies. Taking the form of slide-show-style sequences of stills, they are set to upbeat jazzy soundtracks. In various states of undress, the pair writhe around in a bathtub of grapes, paint each other’s body parts, strike theatrical and sexual poses and gurn away with the exaggerated expressions of silent film stars. Overlaying the images, computer-drawn animation lends the action a brightly coloured, cartoon-like surrealism.

As a founder member of the Viennese Actionsists in the 1960s, Muehl’s aims were to challenge taboos, free repressed desires and expose hypocritical morality. At the time, performances and films that explored basic bodily functions and involved graphic explorations of sexuality plus the liberal flinging around of foodstuffs – some in the form of still-warm animal parts – caused genuine controversy. The images on show are still sexually explicit, but Muehl plays up the grotesque angle by appearing as a mad old professor in a white coat with his false teeth stuck in upside down, and the effect is more slapstick than subversive. Given Muehl’s history as someone who has lived out his philosophy of art – and who, as he approaches his eightieth birthday, is still doing so – you can’t help feeling that talking to the artist himself might have been more interesting.

Helen Sumpter