What underlies the working methods Wiebke Grösch and Frank Metzger have consistently pursued throughout their artistic collaboration and their formal handling of elements and media is clarity of vision. By dint of scrupulous analyses, relations among things are established, whereby resistance can be evoked as a possibility at any time?often playfully?and scope for action brought to light.How does art become a tool for analyzing social processes? By what means can art activate discursive consciousness? The expanded concept of art that dates back to the early 1970s and the concomitant aesthetic dimension of the political are central to the works of Grösch and Metzger. Here they are in line with such artists as Andrea Fraser and Hans Haacke who base their works on artistic research. Artistic procedures are no longer simply reducible to picture production, but now include artistic strategies that engage with the production of knowledge. Ultimately, pictorial research is what is at issue here. The working methods of picture analysis and appropriation have levelled the way for artistic research, representing a transition from pure to applied research. No less important is a complex interest in themes and subjects drawn from spheres as various as theatre, politics and society which are brought into relation in artistic works. Wiebke Grösch and Frank Metzger open these parameters to discussion, using overlaps and juxtaposition to point to forms of artistic research based on complex thematic interrelations. Their installation works are also concerned to break open or analyze social structures or to lay bare the processes involved. They subvert the discursive power of scientific classification by allowing a calculated fuzziness and ambiguity to enter their work. Quoted from the text ?The Brunt of Resistance? by Nina Herlitschka and Bettina Steinbrügge.
