(Grodnau 1925–2013 Moncarapacho, Portugal)
“Verwickelte Wurst”, signed, dated muehl 5.6.02,
acrylic on canvas, 80 x 100 cm, framed

Exhibited and illustrated in the catalogue:
otto muehl, shark, Galerie J. Widauer, Innsbruck 19.11.2003–28.2.2004 / Collection a5 volpinum, Vienna 24.4.2004–9.10.2004

Provenance:
Private Collection, Austria

SHARK MANIFESTO
otto muehl

world view is the object shaped into an image.
great white shark: profile: 7 meters long, teeth as sharp as knives, jaws the size of a barn door, highly aggressive predator, biological killing machine, always hungry, always horny.
he listens to his organs.
killing, eating, and mating are his favourite pastimes.
his insatiable stomach makes him a murderer.
if he hasn’t just eaten, meeting him is deadly.
in order not to be ripped to pieces during intercourse, female sharks grow thick calluses.
the shark is an evolutionary bullseye, a greeting from prehistory.
the shark doesn’t give, he just takes.
he is above every moral judgment.
he is innocent.
the violence of his physical manifestation causes consternation.  
bones splinter when he bites.
man is the only animal that outclasses the shark, not physically, but through his lexical adapter.
he sacrifices the animal’s highly developed sense of smell for his neo-cortex.
a dog is far superior to men in olfactory performance.
the human brain stores what is seen, heard, felt, dreamt, lived, and thus it can be remembered.
man can think, speak, write, paint, dance, sing, compose, invent.
man is the brilliant evolutionary bomb of creativity.
animals live in an innate reality.
man produces many realities. ...
Exhibition catalogue, Otto Muehl, shark, Paris 2003