Produzione Bayrle
Thomas Bayrle in Conversation with Sarah Cosulich Canarutto

S.C.C. “Produzione Bayrle” was one of your first exhibitions. It took place in 1968 in Milano at the Galleria Apollinaire owned by Guido Le Noci. You still consider that project as one of the most significant of your artistic career and this Cardi Black Box re-edition of the original project is a strong statement to prove it. What sparked this first Italian collaboration of yours?

T.B.    In 1963 I had the pleasure to meet Lucio Fontana in Frankfurt. The reason of his stay was a rather big show titled  European Avant-garde organised by Rochus Kowallek and Hermann Goepfert. In the following years  - whenever Helke and I came to Milano – we visited Fontana . It happened several times. I showed him some of my work and he spontaneously introduced me to his gallery, Galleria Apollinaire. Guido Le Noci  was a wonderful man. In 1967 he came to visit me in Frankfurt and we started to talk – although not very concretely - about a show. Yet when he learned about  my coat-project he immediately said “yes, lets do a show”….and so it happened in the spring of 1968.

S.C.C. The word “produzione” is particularly significant for this exhibition but it is also key to understand the mechanisms, implications and meanings of your work in general. With the word production  in fact you stress the process by which the artwork comes into being, you talk about what comes before. And you emphasise also the “constructive” part, the putting together of  single elements…

T.B.    Surprisingly this intelligent title came from Guido Le Noci! In 1957-58 I did an apprenticeship in a weaving factory so I already knew about industrial production. To me industrial production appeared as a gigantic network composed of simultaneously programmed processes running on frantic assembly lines. Already in the mid Sixties the world of machines in their totality  represented some kind of super matrix, laying beyond our western societies. Without any doubts we seemed to believe in an endless chain of products…provided day and night. I also felt industrial production  as something fundamentally positive, it seemed to me in an “amphibolic” stage between throbbing and fascination. It was rarely seen in a critical way like it happened a few years later – or today…

S.C.C. Your work thrives on seriality, on the notion of the mechanically reproduced, of industrial reproduction. It incorporates these ideas in a way that is unique and sparks infinite questions about our society and its mass mechanism. What does the concept of series mean to you and how does it relate to your use of Pop imagery?

T.B.    Beside weaving – or better, through my experience in the factory - I have developed some long lasting metaphors which function for me like personal parameters. Terms like boredom, field, grid, meadow, fabric are steadily de- and re-constructing  some sort of “mattress “ beyond myself. They function in an alternate way between fantasy and technology. It was not so important for me to follow certain aesthetics, but rather to recognize and materialize the emergence of forms, patterns and ornaments of the particular now. To say it with the coats: in 1967 mass-production  in many fields was already overproduction. This was obvious. Walls, floors, streets were already full, completely covered with images, products, people, cars, everything. To me this state seemed like measles or scarlet fever overgrowing the entire “public skin”. So I felt it was just logic to  incorporate people’s clothing as well.

S.C.C. Repetition is a fundamental concept that springs up again and again in front of your work.
From the silkscreens to the wallpapers, the image takes shape from its own repetition. Repetition is implied in your highway imagery as well as in the idea of the conveyor belt running endlessly; repetition is the process which lies at the base of  the theoretical thinking of the work; and it’s the force driving this very exhibition being itself the repetition of another project.  How does creation derive from repetition?

T.B.    Leaving Walter Benjamin out for once - the good old frightening, fatal dimension of  reproduction still runs on and on via seed. But that would not be sufficient – in any long lasting perspective – if there was no steady change. At least philosophically, I fell deeper into the “meadow“ or “mattress” our spiritual existence is built on. From  early times on, I have always felt like a component, a detail, a dot existing within an immense grid. A dot which -  on the one hand – can be  recognized as a constituent of  a “small-scale wholeness”. On the other hand,  it represents a tiny device within  a  larger “super wholeness.”  Procedures like zooming, driving, diving, weaving, breathing seem endless. As organic circulations they brought me to their  “technical” opposite: the “conveyor belt”.  In their primitive, fatal appearance they reminded me of gigantic, never ending thrashing machines – of  dinosaurs  - in total contrast with our enormous, fragile, personal and ever doubting collective bio machines.

S.C.C. Your work deals in a playful way with issues such as science, policy, globalisation, religion, consumerism, technology. Yet it digs deeper into the struggles of contemporary society. What do you feel is your role as artist into passing a certain message to the spectator?

T.B.    To artists it may be allowed to follow some strange looking tracks, threads or suspicions into materials, dreams, nightmares, history. While passing through so many fields, it happens to find similarities and to start weaving these diverse threads into a personal fabric. Without ever trying to reach abridgement. So you work in details, by 'weft and worf', line by line, day by day, on and on… Humour is the oil of this composing machine. It keeps you away from delusions like politics. It’s an important component to stay on the ground.

S.C.C. Produzione Bayrle involves the production of a new series of raincoats, a new revisited edition of the 1968 project. What is your idea of fashion?

T.B.    Fashion? I learned some butterflies fly a thousand miles. Unbelievable…such fragile creatures are so strong. Fashion is more than skin: it makes or fantasies fly on and on.

S.C.C. And what does it mean for you to be modern?

T.B.    I have to watch out to give an intelligent answer. And that’s the moment when I conk out regularly….But I assume, I am not modern.

S.C.C. With this project the spectator doesn’t just look at the work, he can wear it. The images stretch on his body “covering” it with the paradoxes and contradictions of society. How much is humour and how much is critique?

T.B.    Hopefully half and half.

S.C.C. And, since we are talking about quantity… how many cups does it take to make a woman?

T.B.    1857.