The title of Jay Chung & Q Takeki Maeda’s exhibition, “The Auratic Narrative,” alludes to the kind of stories collectively told and repeated by art professionals to frame artists or their works in a way that contributes to their aura, or their presentation as unique and authentic, while creating “fictional expectations” of a future success. Text and art wrestle throughout the show, which is divided into four chapters, each of which takes up one floor of the Kölnischer Kunstverein and includes, alongside the works, a long introductory text by the artists, who write in a singular I. Surprisingly, the speech of this self is molded from an amalgam of quotes from other artists. On the wall at the entrance, the text for the first chapter begins, “I hate competition, but the reality is that artists are engaged in a kind of race,” and carries on about the roles and games artists must play to achieve success. If the four chapters’ narratives, articulated as four stages in an artist’s life, have a personal, emotional tone that is easy to empathize with, the works are displayed in a sober, hermetic presentation. No text, only a leaflet with a floorplan and the works’ titles. …