Following the successful show In Deutschland: reloaded (I) earlier this year, conceived by Klaus Honnef, the second exhibition in the series, In Deutschland: reloaded (II), curated by Wilhelm Schürmann, opened for Gallery Weekend Berlin 2016.
While Honnef presented a condensed selection of images oriented closely on the original 1979 Bonn exhibition at the Rheinisches Landesmuseum, his former co-curator Wilhelm Schürmann expands the show’s spectrum in hindsight. His point of departure is a reconsideration of the situation then, more than 35 years ago, from today’s perspective: how can a historical project be brought up to date? Together, the readings – Honnef’s retrospective and Schürmann’s revision – create a comprehensive picture of this pathbreaking artistic tradition in Germany.
Schürmann’s view focuses on documentary perspectives in West and East Germany since the late 1970s into the present and includes the artists Sibylle Bergemann, Arno Fischer, Jochem Hendricks, Karl-Ludwig Lange, Thomas Leuner, Rudi Meisel, Simone Nieweg, Gabriele and Helmut Nothhelfer, Helga Paris, Peter Piller, Arne Schmitt, Harald Schmitt, Petra Wunderlich and Ulrich Wüst.
The basis of Schürmann’s revision is the archeology of the everyday in its various facets: the representation of agricultural or manmade landscapes (Nieweg, Wunderlich), GDR photographers still unknown in 1979 (Paris, Wüst), different images of transition (Lange, Leuner, Fischer, Bergemann, Meisel) that portray the political turn and Berlin’s emergence as the new center. With consideration for the new media landscape and a sense of history, artists such as Hendricks and Piller take up images from the 1970s or precisely and soberly dissect today’s status quo (Schmitt).
Simone Nieweg and Petra Wunderlich pursue the archeology of the everyday in the boundaries between nature and culture.
They find their images in cultivated land (Nieweg) and marble quarries (Wunderlich), which Schürmann exhibits here as man-manipulated landscapes.
One of the curator’s particular interests is the then unknown photography of the GDR. Helga Paris and Ulrich Wüst especially embody that aesthetic’s objective and yet immersive view of people, buildings, rooms, streets, and events. Paris conveys this perspective in her series Halle. Häuser und Gesichter (Buildings and Faces) (1983–85), while Wüst simply calls his sketches from East Berlin and other places Notizen (Notes) (1984–85).
Images of transition appear frequently in Schürmann’s present-day take. The German turn (Wende) and reunification, the situation preceding and following it, come through in stark individual images by Thomas Leuner (SO 36, 1985), Arno Fischer (Ostberlin, Silvester, 1989–90), and Karl-Ludwig Lange (Leipziger Platz, 2000). Sibylle Bergemann’s documentation of a Marx-Engels memorial stored in a greenhouse looks today as if transported in time directly from the moment.
Jochem Hendricks and Peter Piller are interested in the second glance, in new perspectives on things seemingly known. Both rework anonymous images of various provenances from the 1970s. Hendricks retrospectively reopens the subject of the “German Autumn” with pictures from a found police archive, which he draws upon as a port to the other side, to the allegedly dangerous Other. Piller bought a company archive of aerial photos of single-family homes, which he calls “von oben schöner” (more beautiful from above); with the help of the “distance of photography,” he reveals the structures of a standardized life.
Arne Schmitt uses sober gestures to portray the urban architecture of the postwar period in his series Stadthaus (2011) in Bonn. His visual essay takes up politicians’ often failed attempts at architectural representation (in the case of Bonn, its hope for an architectural “crown jewel”), the moment “when ethos takes form” (from the 2012 exhibition of the same title in Hanover’s Sprengel Museum).
In the oeuvre of Gabriele and Helmut Nothhelfer, their image of man in relation to the individual and the crowd, both timeless and contemporaneous, intensified over decades. Rudi Meisel, a traveling independent journalist in both West and East Germany in the 1970s and 1980s, visualized characteristic everyday scenes and thus managed to capture German society as a whole before the fall of the Wall.
In this collection of images spanning the last forty years, Schürmann brings together pictures both created and found in contrary political systems. All have eluded any official perspective.
EXHIBITION
In Deutschland: reloaded (II)
From April 30 to September 2, 2016
Kicken Berlin
Linienstrasse 161A
D – 10115 Berlin
Germany
[email protected]
http://www.kicken-gallery.com
