If You Know, You Know.

With the solo exhibition "If You Know, You Know." by Patrick Fabian Panetta (*1977, lives and works in Berlin), the Kunstverein Friedrichshafen provides insights into an artistic practice which derives from structural issues, spatial or social situations and thus finds its form. An intensive examination of art as a system and the analysis of its components is a constant point of reference in Panetta’s work, due to the fact that it’s precisely this system he is inevitably confronted with as an artist, The approach to understand art as an analogy or model, which can be used to describe numerous mechanisms and structures of our reality, leads to the consequence of applying the underlying structures of systems, thus also those of art, as working material. Following this logic, the source material for "If You Know, You Know." is the Kunstverein in its physical and cultural-political self-understanding. Beginning with the reinterpretation of the working and exhibition space and their architectural functions, over the alteration of the lighting conditions, to interventions in the Kunstverein's corporate design, figuratively speaking, a double floor is created on which the works are installed. These works are two newly produced video installations, which again refer in form and content to the underlying material – the architecture as well as the core function of an art association, to exhibit art. Patrick Panetta thus makes not only visible the conventions of exhibiting itself, but also the convention and conditionality of the exhibited. The origin of these considerations was the staircase that connects the lower exhibition space with the upper one. In its massiveness, it dominates the entire spatial structure, and since it is almost impossible to prevent an interaction between the staircase and the exhibited works, Panetta decided to exploit the motif of the staircase by assembling endlessly film sequences of staircase falls. "L'esprit de l'escalier" (2021) is an allegory of failure and a digital image of the spatial situation between sculpture and caricature. On the second level on the upper floor, the usual expectations of an exhibition are not fulfilled either. The situation is more reminiscent of a waiting room. But the viewer also gets to see the video "Mixtape" (2002 -2021) – a compilation of shortened video works from the last two decades. Most of them belong to series, were part of installations, exhibitions, video screenings or are fragmentary attempts respectively potential raw material for future works. The individual parts of the exhibition come together like words in an endless flowing text. They can be compared to an essay which approaches a subject from many sides without grasping it completely. If You Know, You Know.