Fernando Castro Flórez /// A resurrection of this tomb. [Scattered Words around Beuys]

Beuys reconstructs his life as a continuous montage of exhibitions: he converts himself into a parasite of his own wounds. His 'autobiography' notes that at 10 years of age, two shows took place in Kleve: Contracted Exhibition and Exhibition of the Contraction, followed later by Exhibition Underground (parallel to the earth). Beuys situates himself on the Benjaminian terrain under construction: his visionary gaze is that of a child at play: 'Naturally none of this was anything other than a game. Like, for example, using bits of old cloth, rags and scraps which we had tramped about in to build large awnings like those of field tents, in which we exhibited all those things, starting with mosquitoes, reptiles, tadpoles, fish, beetles, rats and mice, and even old bits of machinery and some technical apparatus or other –in other words, as much as we could find. Considerable seismic movements were produced too, since we built our dwellings partly underground in a labyrinth of gutters.' The correspondences are clear: the gutters and the labyrinth, the awning and the Tower of Babel, the weird zoological collection and Noah's Ark. Beuys' works survive as fragments, loose bits of a great confession and a great confusion. It is a message grafted onto death, a provocative and deformed ugliness..