Three examples: First, Schüttes first solo exhibition at Rüdiger Schöttle gallery in 1980, then located in the Martiusstraße in Munich. A choice of works ranging from Grüne Kacheln/Green Tiles (1980) over Punkte/Spots (1980) to Kollektion/ Collection (1980) was presented as a “decorative project” featuring one, at maximum two works per room. (Ill. 2-5) Second, the decoration of the postcard-shop of Buchhandlung Walther König 1981 in Cologne´s Ehrenstraße. (Ill. 6-7) In collaboration with the fellow artist Ludger Gerdes Schütte installed a frieze of upright colourfields in red on a yellow ground all around the walls with the inscription, ‘Alles in Ordnung’ (Everything ok) marked out as condensation trails on the bluish ceiling. Third, the installation of a ‘garland’ in Marlboro-red color from the ‘Kollektion’ (1977) around the ceiling of the office in which Kasper König worked as the exhibition commissioner for the exhibition, Westkunst, which took place the same year in Cologne´s Messehallen. (Ill. 8)
Schütte’s activity coincided with that of artists such as Bruce Nauman who were present in Düsseldorf as persona and with their work due do their connections to Konrad Fischer and other leading curators und museum directors; artistic positions from the 1960s were enthusiastically taken up by curators and critically reflected in retrospect by individual protagonists. The enthusiasm for this art’s autonomous unapproachability, its conscious dealing with space and time, and the accompanying reduction of artistic means, contrast with the result of an reflection that Mario Merz had published for the first time in 1976 under the title: ‘A very long Sunday has lasted since 1966 - and we are now in 1976.’ The ‘stripping of (European) culture’ is dealt with as a symbolic process, which, on the one hand, had led to an impoverishment of artistic forms of expression and on the other, had shaken art’s ability to catch up with those subjects which were now most relevant. Merz winds up with an ambivalent assessment of this ‘Sunday’-self-referentiality of art. His text does not suggest a way out. The reach of art is limited: its original material, ‘mud’, is the same things as that which business wants to shape and sell.
It is one characteristic of Bruce Nauman’s artistic practice not to give in to such irrevocable truths. Instead of looking for ways out, he is interested in finding a solution to the most difficult problem, namely ‘to present an idea as directly as possible.’ In 1980, a version of Nauman’s neon-work, ‘Sweet-Suite-Substitute’ was presented in the staircase of Museum Haus Lange in Krefeld. The idea for this work goes back to a drawing dated 1968 and measuring 47.5 x 60 cm, which was then part of Konrad Fischer´s collection. Nauman´s handwritten annotations clarify that the drawing is the design for a wall-work, in which the programming of the sequence of illumination reveals the three layers of letters, forming the words SWEET, SUITE, SUBSTITUTE, in succession. According to Nauman, art like this is intended to replace your favourite furniture. In the same year, 1980, Nauman designed the outside neon-work ‘Galerie mit Bleistift Fischer’ (Gallery with Fischer Pencil). Shortly afterwards, it was installed on a wall of the inner courtyard of the Konrad Fischer Gallery in Platanenstraße in Düsseldorf.