Jonas Höschl

The video essay “Why are you crying?” (2024) by Jonas Höschl, which was first shown last year at the Various Others gallery festival organized by Nebulya X EIGEN+ART Lab in cooperation with the Museum Brandhorst and the NS Documentation Center, deals with the auction of 135 works from the private art collection of Gloria von Thurn und Taxis at Phillips auction house in New York in 2005. While a static camera repeatedly shows the sky above St. Emmeram Palace in Regensburg, a voice-over describes exemplary works of art that were auctioned off. He continues this exploration of the presence and absence of art in Gloria von Thurn und Taxis' collection in a new series of works in the exhibition “Why are you crying? Volume 2” at the Neuer Kunstverein Regensburg.

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The exhibition “Why are you crying? Volume 2” by Jonas Höschl uses the example of the collection policy and public figure Gloria von Thurn und Taxis to deal with disappearance, transience, and the fading of memory. In a gesture critical of institutions, the artist has flooded the exhibition rooms with 5 tons of sand. This interferes with the physical reception of the artworks by the viewers and allows them to leave traces that extend into the public urban space.

The title of the two wall display cases “They took the idols and smashed them” comes from a quote by the fictional character Norma Desmond from the 75-year-old film Sunset Boulevard, in which the former acting icon desperately fights against her own insignificance and a changing film industry. She lives in isolation in a large villa with a butler, clinging to her long-gone fame. The display cases contain archive material (magazines, interviews, and pictures) from Gloria von Thurn und Taxis' glorious past as a “punk princess” which is faded beyond recognition by the repeatedly superimposed collage of transparent paper.