The chewing gum is the only thing that really doesn't look fresh anymore. When Vollrad Kutscher's "Schlundmurgeln", mini portrait sculptures made of bubble gum, were still new in 1975, they had the pastel-colored colourfulness of chewed chewing gum. They are the remnants of his performance "Chewing Gum Talk", repeated several times until the 1990s. Today the works are dull lumps in different earth tones. The rest of them radiate what they were 40 or 50 years ago: now. In a refreshingly unpretentious way. And very funny. Why is that? Maybe what Kutscher says when he walks through the exhibition. Job? “The money came from Jobs. The art was sacred, ”he says and grins. The handful of young artists who were friends in Frankfurt at the time have categories of success, profession or security.became friends, made common cause, not interested.

Eva-Maria Magel

Head of culture editor Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

  • Follow I follow

And Frankfurt, at least the official art establishment of the time, did not care for them.

At the time, Frankfurt was inhospitable, tough, a difficult place.

Places for young art: none.

He also stayed, says Kutscher, now 76 years old and since then a Frankfurt artist, because he thought: "If you make art here and survive, it will be a completely different art than elsewhere."

Rejection by the city

This is how the “substitute art” came into being, which can now be seen as a lively memory in the Frankfurt exhibition hall at Schulstrasse 1A. In the winter of 1975, the cultural office offered young artists in the city, Vollrad Kutscher, Stephan Keller, Walter Hanusch and others, the municipal gallery for an exhibition for the first time. And the offer was immediately withdrawn when the first graphics and mixed media works arrived in the hall of the cultural office: That was “not Christmas enough”.

The coachman still laughs today when he thinks back on it. A Christmas tree by Nicole Guiraud, one of her mason jar works, is emblazoned in the exhibition as a counter-evidence of perpetual “Christmas spirit”. Only a few steps away, at Schifferstrasse 22, where Stephan Keller worked, the artists themselves created a replacement for the unusual presentation. So it came to the first "replacement exhibition", which made a joke of the claims of politics and establishment, replacement was for the rejection by the city.

The neon "Ersatz" above the entrance to the exhibition "Ersatzkunst in Frankfurt."

The desert years 1975–1985 ”.

In order to green the artistic desert in which they were staying, the loose group of Frankfurt artists organized exhibitions, performances and film shoots together - and of course also celebrated wildly.

Art as a profession, combined with the need to earn money, is what Vollrad Kutscher, who has repeatedly taught, is skeptical to this day.

3000 young artists are washed into the market every year.

You cannot avoid thinking about the present while you wander through the “substitute art”.

From the cellar to the exhibition

Kutscher hat viele der Exponate in seinem Keller gehütet und zusammen mit der Kuratorin Isa Bickmann daraus die Ausstellung zusammengestellt, die, obwohl alles Rückschau ist, frisch wirkt. Ein lesenswerter Katalog, herausgegeben von Bickmann, ordnet die „Ersatzkunst“ in die Epoche und in die damalige Frankfurter Szene ein, mit vielen Beiträgen der Protagonisten.

Der „Ersatz“ wurde bald zu einem Treff- und Knotenpunkt der vielfachen künstlerischen Beziehungen, die zwischen den Akteuren bestehen. Die Ausstellung erinnert auch an jene, die den Weg der Kunst oder des Lebens abgebrochen haben. Eine Entdeckung der Ausstellung sind die Arbeiten der jung verstorbenen Annick Laforgue (1945–1976), ihre Figuren aus Pappmaschee und rätselhafte Lithographien, humoristisch, poetisch und melancholisch zugleich.

This “substitute”, which is to be taken literally, flourished until 1985, because everything the artists used came from everyday life beyond colors, paper and techniques, from sausages to wallpaper, the “wallpaper house” in Stephan Keller's walk-in “wallpaper house” “From 1978 asks what art is - and also becomes a playful demonstration of the agility and technical sophistication of art.

The actions and performances can also be seen in films, some of which are by Dieter Reifarth: Keller danced the “Frankfurt Tango” with a dead pig, which was naturally eaten afterwards.

Alfred Harth and the very young Heiner Goebbels played as a "substitute orchestra".

At that time, Ottmar Hörl's dwarfs were still made of ceramics and not in successfully marketed series as Goethe, Luther, Ampelmännchen in plastic.

The substitute artists didn't know at the time that art would eventually become a profession and, for some of them, a profitable one.

If you believe coachmen, they didn't care either.

The "desert years" did not turn into a dry spell.

Replacement art until September 26th, Wednesday and Thursday 6pm to 8pm, Friday to Sunday 2pm to 6pm.

The catalog was published by Kann Verlag and costs 29 euros.