TAZ 16.2.2005
Die Tageszeitung, Berlin
Es fährt ein Bus nach Sachsenhausen

Die dunkle Seite von Hugo Boss: Eine Ausstellung in der ifa-Galerie zeigt, wie unterschiedlich sich Künstler der Erinnerung an den Holocaust nähern

(There's a bus driving to Sachsenhausen - the dark side of Hugo boss), TAZ the daily newspaper (D)

"…Alongside works like Uriel Orlows research at the Wiener Library and at a synagogue that was converted into swimming baths by the Nazis in Poznan, or alongside Heidi Stern's successful translation into three dimensional scenic images modelled in clay, from the documentary film "The Photograph", by Dariusz Jablonski, Tanya Ury's examination of the fashion firm Hugo Boss' past is the weakest project of the exhibition. While her "Boss Rune No. 1" in taking up the deconstruction of the SS typography, is not without humour, her posing in an old leather Luftwaffe coat that she montages together with Boss advertisements and extremely sugary comic illustrations from the Franco era, is less convincing.

From 1940 on, the Hugo Boss firm in Metzingen also employed Forced Labour for their production work. Over and above this, the Clothing firm owes its success entirely to its close contacts with the National Socialist Party - the owner Hugo Ferdinand Boss had become a member already before 1933. The company made uniforms not only for the Party, but also for the SA (Storm Troopers), SS and HJ (Hitler Youth) until the end of the war. The last order was to make uniforms for the SS leadership. Today, from 1996 on to be exact, the firm has adorned itself with an internationally renowned prize for contemporary art that the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation presents every two years in New York. There seems to be a fateful affinity between the German love for contemporary art and the profits from Forced Labour.

In the meantime, the company Hugo Boss need fear no conflict over their prize, like Flick. In the year 2000 they paid into the Funding initiative, and two years later the board of directors apologised to former Forced Labourers, who had been invited to the city of Metzingen.

In the light of this, the firm's advertising campaign for a perfume in 2002, that announces "The Darker Side of Hugo" is stupid, if not provocative and cynical. Here Tanya Ury succeeds in her placing together of a newspaper article about the firm during the Nazi period and the advertising image - it is a strong image admittedly. But her claim that the company's past "raises profound questions surrounding the relationships between fashion and military fashion, fashion and politics" explains this work just as little as it does the work "Who's Boss: Your Rules", 2004. Here, alongside the Boss model who has the words "Your Rules" written on the palm of his hand, she has sewn the name Boss into the palm of her hand, analoguos to the works of Daniel Buetti. The Swiss artist became well known with his images of advertising beauties into whose skin he had apparently cut various company logos, when in fact he had only engraved the photographs. Buetti's vastly overrated art works intend to present a critical approach to consumer aesthetics; in reality, they serve themselves in a most parasitical manner, with the aura of beauty and advertising. To cite Buetti, of all things, as an artistic reference, does not imply profound questioning…"

Part of an article by Brigitte Werneburg (English translation by Tanya Ury)