FRANKFURT - Paper bags, bananas, and love.
Ordinary objects and a simple word we alternately curse and praise. These were among the symbols and ideas used by a group of artists who staged an exhibit called "Kunst und Kummunikation im Dialog," or Art and Communication in Dialog, in a makeshift gallery at the Frankfurt Book Fair.
There, in the international hall past row after row of books by Polish, Russian, and Japanese authors, weary fair-goers found one of the niftiest hideouts around: A small house made of paper-bag paper by a 33-year-old artist named Thitz.
Walk into the closet-sized house, and hanging from the ceiling is an array of mug shots - all found on various Web sites - printed on paper bags with the URL listed below the picture. Red, green, and yellow lights flash from inside some of the bags.
"When I look at the Internet, I had the impression that when I find a face I think they call out to me. Like a light saying, 'Hi! Look at me. Send me something.'
"But it's only a glimpse, and then they're gone," said Thitz, who lives in Berlin and Stuttgart.
Among the faces calling out in Thitz's bag house are criminals from the FBI's most-wanted list, women from India, and a Great Dane.
Helmut Schuster, the co-owner of the gallery that coordinated the show, has long had serious doubts about using computers for art.
"I always thought the Internet was the end of art," said Schuster, 38. "I told everyone you must feel the materials and see the color, and that transporting it into the screen doesn't work.
"But now, with this younger generation, there's a new art style I can respect. For this generation who's growing up now, a computer is a normal thing they use like a pencil."
For Cologne artist Thomas Baumgaertel, otherwise known as the Banana Sprayer, living without a computer is unthinkable. But the machine is not the basis of communication.
"For me, one of the most important places of communication is my banana sofa," said 36-year-old Baumgaertel, who 11 years ago started spray-painting bananas in front of galleries whose art he liked and has been painting bananas ever since. His banana sofa is a yellow vinyl love-seat with black banana forms dancing about.
"The basis is to talk and look into each other's eyes. That is the basis of communication."
As for love - or Liebe, as it were: Munich artist Lucia Dellefant created the show's centerpiece, a race-car track set up to spell Liebe, installed on a board that has pictures of skin and various body parts, the whole thing sprinkled with dried flowers and pink, yellow, and white crepe paper.
"You can drive the race cars," said Dellefant, who was born in 1965. "If two people are in a relationship, sometimes it's difficult. It's the same with this."
Technology is an important ingredient in Dellefant's art. "For me, it means the possibility to move something. Technology is one of the best things to let visitors be a part of the art work."
Dellefant reached for the remote control, lined up one of the cars, and demonstrated.
Smooth going for a while. And then ...
"Whoa!" she said, as the shiny red race-car spun out on the autobahn of love.
