Now Showing in Germany

Today, the contemporary art exhibition "BITTE FOLGEN - Projekt Elisabet Ney 2008" opens in the town gallery of Münster, Germany. Included in the exhibit are seven of the sculpture anaglyphs that I assembled back in 2002 from photos I took at the Elizabet Ney Museum here in Austin, Texas. I'm pleased that the artists group that assembled the show, and Elke Seppmann in particular, chose to include my work. I wish them success with their show.

January 26th is Elizabet Ney's 175th birthday. It will be marked by a party at the exhibition and by the opening of a separate exhibit at the town museum. The show runs, if I've interpreted the German-language invitation correctly, until the 29th of this month. From there, it will move on to two other town galleries in Münsterland. Those of us who can't nip off to Germany to have a look first-hand, can get some of the flavor of the exhibition from its associated web site, which is also used as the means to display my anaglyphs in the show.

I am grateful and amused that the copyright notices they've placed on my images refer to me as "Dr. Chris Johnson", thereby awarding me a doctorate that, for the record, I don't have. I'm a great believer in the importance of education, and I've devoted my adult life to The University of Texas at Austin, but, ironically, as a pupil, the educational system and I never got along. Looking back, I should have known that I was in trouble when, at some uncertain point in my early elementary school years, I failed a test due to the question: "Can fish fly?" I answered "yes", knowing damn well that some fish can fly, having read a children's book about the voyage of Magellan, which included mention of flying fish. I raised the issue with my teacher and was told that she was right and I was wrong, and that was that. Fish cannot fly, even if some of them do. My journey through the educational system was pretty much all downhill from there.