Images by Thomas Mailaender.

« Mailaender’s forum and sphere of operations is less the art world than the rowdier public domain where events can easily run out of control. Society evolved a livid counter-culture, staffed by fallen angels of all sorts. When exactly that culture originated is unclear, but it flourishes and services a fevered public imagination entranced by its own wit and jokes. The majority of solid citizens follow football, for instance, for the artistry of the game, but a hard core of activists revel in its shouted and insulting poetry. If art is to put itself on a par with such a spontaneous and convulsive counter-culture it has to cultivate the kind of suddenness which is Mailaender’s forte. »

Ian Jeffrey