Ort der List

in I AM AN NETWORKER (SOMETIMES) FRICKER

One of about twelve ovens erected to date in different places and with the most varied material available in each case. This oven, erected with natural stones in 1982 in a baking bed in Appenzellerland, marks the "Ort der List" dedicated to the Polish networker Pawel Petasz.

In 1985, a button by Fricker appeared with the inscription "Place of Cunning". You could wear this button on your lapel and become a place of cunning yourself, but you could also use it to turn any place into a place of cunning. But which cunning? [...]

And where art as cunning becomes a way of life, the trickster begins, the rogue, one who deceives and yet is always deceived himself: simultaneously giver and denier, creator and destroyer. And who eludes at the very point where one thinks he can finally be grasped: the art refuser Fricker exhibits at the Kunstverein St. Gallen and again makes a trick out of it: he integrates the exhibition into his context, into his most extended mail art concept: the institution becomes a flow heater for his art, which still refers to something outside. Oven, oh oven, listen...