This work is a concentrated text consisting of a few lines and represents
nothing but the description of the creative process - no more and no less.
There is the claim that art is energy in its most beautiful form and - by
agreeing with this assertion - Temmel affirms the existence of art, as he is
convinced of its positive force. It is irrelevant here that art and its
diverse manifestations in the varied cultures on this planet have in part a
totally different social context. It is the desription of creative thought and
action in simple and reduced language that raises this text beyond its
cultural context and gives it a general validity - over and above all cultural
borders.
This text was chiseled into a marble slab and constituted the sole content of
a work created by Temmel in 1981 ("Art for many is something like a dead
foreign language"), and with it he hit upon a clear, and thoroughly ironic,
statement on the readability and comprehensibilty of codes.
To translate An art history in all possible written/standard languages
represents a further step in this work and has turned into an enormous project,
as it is the (mad) attempt to make the impossible feasible: as for one thing,
there is the impossibility of the authentic translation of a text from one
language to another, and for another, approximately 2000 written/standard
languages exist worldwide today.
Inspite of this or rather for this very reason, Temmel has dedicated himself
since 1983 to this project, which is much more complex than any five-year plan.