American Dream Show Artist: Thitz Thitz´ Museum Bags A museum one can unfortunately not carry away. This could only work in our thoughts, as a small model or as a cut-out and stick-together modelling sheet packed in a bag. But the other way round it’s possible: a bag can easily get into a museum, can be folded and stacked neatly or it can make space for itself by swelling, jostling in and spreading out. It has the advantage that one can carry something in it, even if it’s only air and it transports a visible message in the print on it. That’s its strength which none of the other important exhibits can live up to.   What keeps us from declaring it to be a museum object in itself? Bags are objects of everyday life which we encounter daily like other common things, e.g. shoes, umbrellas, caps and coins, pipes and pots, all items which we can look at in the glass show-cases of museums. Why not bags? Especially Thitz Bags: his bags aren’t normal ones. They are bags that act individually, with an inner personal life, not homogenous trivial bags printed by the thousands with the same request “Eat fresh fruit and vegetables”, they are more subversive bags with logos like ”happy and rich”, “rich but lonely”, bags on which beautiful girls lounge or shrill guys inquisitively examine the bag-viewer.     Thitz has built himself a Bag World pulsating and buzzing with life, an empire full of high voltage energy, humour, satire and cunning. Is there anything better for a museum – this grumpy know-all old spinster – than a fresh gust of cheeky wind blowing through its stuffy rooms? The Museum of the City of Waiblingen which celebrates its 10th anniversary in 2001 never was a child of sadness, from the beginning it went its own way, showed alternatives, cut old tails and ventured on new territory.     This was not a guarantee for absolute safety, rather the opposite: we couldn’t know where the next step would take us to. At times there was interference from the left then again from the right, yet we followed our long way undisturbed through the jungle of rusty opinions. Now after 10 years the hard cut jungle trail has become a path on which we can walk comfortably and can contemplate the rare and beautiful things at its sides. One first goal has been reached, one race won. Unknown lands lie before us, which we want to cross but not conquer.The vanguard to venture into these strange lands Thitz Museum Bags shall be.   They are cheerful ambassadors of a peaceful world, downright critical but not offensive. They took over the museum, nested in it and contributed self-confidently to it. In their special way they make us aware of our work and create a new complacency which softens old ways of thinking and acting and mixes them with new ideas of perception. Through this new dimensions are created which boost our impetus for discovery, giving us the opportunity to see and judge things differently. We never stop learning and that is good so because what would our lives be like if we’d know it all? It would be meaningless and superfluous. Therefore: Bags to the Museum! Helmut Herbst Director of the Museum Waiblingen , Germany from www.Thitz.de   back to our artists... Print-Version