At first glance, Jochen Schmith seems normal, but he spells himself as a strange kind of person. A Germanised Anglo-Saxon oscillates between SCH and TH. Someone presenting himself as one person turns out to be multiple. Two parts of this group of artists are called Peter, the other third is called Carol. Together they pass themselves off as a cosmopolitan Everyman. At first, I knew only that Jochen Schmith had visited apartments in Hong Kong and photographed the view of the dense sea of houses from the balcony, because this view is meant to be an important measure of value. I know such occupations from television, where these imitations of the behaviour of wealthy people in the corresponding shows are wearying. So it was with some prejudice that I drove over the Elbe bridges towards Harburg, where works by Jochen Schmith were to be displayed in the exhibition series »Reihe: Ordnung sagt« under the sub-section »Money«. Money wasn’t that promising either, but Jochen Schmith was a name with a ring to it; and the main reason I drove there was because I had spent happy afternoons visiting the first two parts of the series, curated by Tim Voss. What is more, the route to the southern part of the city passes one of my favourite buildings as a child, the »New-York Hamburger Gummi-Waaren Compagnie« of 1871. Every time I get to the corner with the weather-beaten picture-book factory, I get lost and then roam about for much too long through the port. This time, the detour was to provide a suitable prelude to the exhibition: one floor work, which connects up all the other works, is based on a piece of news that circulated in the regional media last year. Customs officers had discovered ten thousand Chinese imitations of a well-known brand of sneakers in containers. Pirate copies that then had to be destroyed. Jochen Schmith maintains that the shredded imitations were turned into a granulate like that found in the rubber floor that now leads through the exhibition. The path through the displayed items is thus smoothed by a recycling product whose raw material was gained by upholding the rights of the original. But at first I barely see the industrial product because it is dark, and do not understand the connection until the catalogue, which was on display everywhere, explains it to me. So at first I walk unsuspectingly on rubber and am led softly to a white piece of sheeting upon which is written »Between the Crises«. Even in the dim light, this half sentence in foamy writing seems like a topical commonplace that I assume I have read often before. Something that has been said is said once again and soon forms one of the dots in the pattern that begins to unfold. The piece of sheeting is one of many sheets that were removed as artificial walls, leaving behind a naked metal framework and neat piles. This divestiture, I believe, enables me to recognise the room, with its past as a waiting room for first-class passengers, much more clearly. Why does it become dark when the walls are taken down? Gradually, the interplay of implied questions, emphatic claims and nonsensical insights begins to put me under its spell. On one of the remaining walls hang heavy gold frames. They contain two Chinese-made copies of Jan Brueghel’s painting »The Allegory of the Earth« - exactly two copies of an original that is considered to be lost. Production conditions are presented as a detective story. What is hanging there can be read as a document of changed added value; however, it also recalls the origin of the word allegory, »other speaking«, and suggests what kind of speaking is going on here: Jochen Schmith employs different forms of speech in the in-between and arranges the unauthentic pitches in new formations. The tones, struck elegantly and cleverly, oscillate between analysis and strategy, thus opening further in-between spaces. Meanings appear, but do not conceal the fact that they are riddled with holes. These artistic linguistics in search of a possible place where the signs speak is interrupted by the apparent observation of a situation: a car park attendant is sleeping next to a Mercedes limousine. It is impossible to say whether he comes from reality or a film script. At any rate, the living picture points towards three more islands of light. On the first one, the video by the guest at the exhibition, Willem Oorebeek, is shown on a monitor. For almost an hour, the viewer follows the hand-held camera of the Dutch artist through China. On the second island, I stand beneath a loudspeaker and hear descriptions from a world that seems like work. At the same time, I see the third island of light with a strange golden, reflective standing object or partition made of security glass: the question of money is constantly reflected in the virtual architecture of the meanings, but is lost a moment later in abstractions. Nonetheless, its reflection is not reduced to a tautology that is lost in abstractions about abstract money. It is rather an odour captured between the things and signs, rising occasionally to the nose like intelligent perfume.
Translated by Timothy Jones