Last summer I googled myself again. You want to know where you stand – in life and on the net. And lo and behold, this time I was standing in the Kunsthalle Wien! In 2018, dozens of women and men stood around on a kind of chipboard floor and did what you do in exhibitions. They talked, crossed their arms, dangled their handbags.

Why did Google Image Search send me here? I wasn't in Vienna in 2018, let alone in the Wiener Kunsthalle, flooded with artificial ceiling light. But I had been to Tbilisi in 2006, where I had photographed a number of Georgian day labourers. The eight photos were published on March 7, 2007 with a text by me under the heading "From collective to subjunctive" in the F.A.Z.

And these same men, who had stood flat day in and day out on an arterial road in the Georgian capital, were now painted on the floor of the Kunsthalle. I recognized her immediately, the young man in a striped sweater, the older one with a wool hat and cigarette, the third with an outstretched belly, over which a thin anorak stretched. Photorealistically painted and larger than life, they lay at the feet of the Viennese audience. I was flat, just as flat as the men with their drills and hands casually tucked into their pockets.

Just no megalomania

That's great, I thought. My paintings are art now! Not that I ever cared. Nevertheless, I was proud, I felt almost brushed. Didn't that mean that I have now also become an artist?

But wait, don't get megalomaniac! I had not yet been honored in a solo exhibition, but only in a group exhibition. In addition to the Georgian day labourers, other large-format pictures were scattered on the chipboard floor. From the "Süddeutsche Zeitung" of April 19, 2006, a show jumper was painted. The "NZZ am Sonntag" of 15 September 2013 had donated a snow-covered hilltop. From the "Wall Street Journal" of April 10, 2018, fossil bones had found their way to Vienna.

The artist Olaf Nicolai collected a total of 22 newspaper photos in order to have them repainted by theatre and street painters on the floor of the Kunsthalle for his exhibition "There Is No Place Before Arrival". I thought what was on show in Vienna from 13 July to 7 October 2018 was great. Less beautiful, however, were the shoe prints that the visitors had left on one of the day laborers. They were clearly visible on one of the photos on the net, because the photographer had taken his red Chucks right away.

I downloaded a PDF of the exhibition catalogue, saw the snow-covered hilltop from the "NZZ", saw the show jumper from the "Süddeutsche", saw right-wing radicals in jackets, saw sleeping Macedonians, and finally, on page 16, I also saw the old, long forgotten newspaper clipping. They looked poor, the eight day labourers, nevertheless dignified, almost a little proud. Below it was written: "Vom Kollektiv zum Konjunktiv, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung Nr. 56, 7.3.2007, p. 9, photo: Christoph Moeskes".

So that's how Google found me, my name was hidden in the PDF. For an almost famous up-and-coming artist like me, that was perhaps a bit too modest. But at least I was now on an equal footing with Peter Handke and Giorgio Agamben. Nicolai had attached a number of quotations to each newspaper clipping in the exhibition catalogue, in addition to the writer and the philosopher, René Pollesch and Billy Ocean ("Get Outta My Dreams, Get Into My Car") were also represented. I liked the quote from Sappho best. "Money without human value / dwells with us in order to harm," wrote the most important poetess of ancient Greece. I was in good company. It's getting better and better, I thought. My paintings are conceptual art!