Is it the blues of the last time that so many people came to visit the Christer Strömholm exhibition at the C/O the 8th of mars in Berlin? Was it the black and white reminiscence in our Handy-picture-time? Is it the prefiguration of themes that became famous with Nan Goldin? The swedish photograph Christer Strömholm has taken pictures of the Drag queens and transexuals at “la place blanche ” in Paris between 1956 and 1965 year before Goldin did so. Fact is that photo exhibitions are often crowded as if the nostalgia of the dying media has an attraction to the viewer. And fact is that it is the last day of the specific atmosphere at the Postfuhrwerke in Berlin Mitte where you could smell the pictures hanging on the wall.
Looking at this picture it is difficult to decide if the shadow of Mercury has an deeper impact or the whiteness of the Italian marble of the fisherman, which marks a new theme in art history. The exhibition showed Rude and his wife as what they are, artists working in a classic style, even if the fishermen’s smile and Jeanne d’Arc’s lost gaze promise something else.
That’s it! documenta will close soon. Only 16 days left. Sure there are people out there who saw art they were interested in. I was only bored seeing artists with an archeological approach to nearly everything. One of the intriguing places was the documenta Halle with the ballet of blankets on the Metzgerdrawings, Mehretu’s paintings between plan and explosion and Thomas Bayrle’s installation of works that transformed the spectators in a swarm of viewers. Even if nobody will remember this documenta as outstanding event everybody is waiting for the next one.
The floor was quite weird and kind of used like a dance floor or a basketball field.
At the C/O in Berlin Oranienburgerstraße at Friday night the 16th of march opened the exhibition of Bruce Davidsons Subway series. The dye tranfers pictures were published for the first time in 1986 and show the New York Subway in the beginning eighties. Even if he began shooting the pictures in black and white it is the light treatment of the color pictures that stays in mind. The book was republished by Steidl and Aperture in its third edition. The party was in fact quite boring and only a crazy outlaw declaring Berlin his private city and attacking tourists at the Oranienburgerstraße changed the situation until he was taken away by the good samaritans of the red cross, but nobody has taken pictures.
This photo of Rosa Meissner at the Rhon Hotel in Warnemünde taken in 1907 by Edward Munch was the basis for seven pictures of the “crying women” series. Munch worked his motives much in series of paintings in which he gives new expressions and colors to his paintings, sometimes over a long period. Even if this serial approach may not directly refer to the Kierkegaard’s book “The repetition” edited in 1843, it sounds all the same obvious that there is an analogy to Kierkegaard’s book in which he recalls his separation from Regine Olsen. For Kierkegaard as for Munch, the repetition is the ”daily bread”. In the photograph we’ll see Munch’s shadow looking right at the walking “Rosa Meissner”, his hand under his nose. This reference to the observer puts the relation between the subject and the one who perceives it, in the center of interest. The exhibition that is shown at the Centre Pompidou is to be seen at the Kunsthalle Schirn from the 9. of February to the 13. of May 2012.
This picture of a Djamel Tatah exhibition in the Chambord castle is the visual proof that contemporary art has become an obligation. You can’t even visit castles without seeing contemporary art. Even if the juxtaposition of the contemporary and the old is working as a provocation with artists like Jeff Koons in Versailles here in Chambord it is vain decoration of the void. Here in the Tatah exhibition it is perfectly integrated in the space. Art is loosing the touch of contestation, provocation, visual counterpart, fun or expression of everything that connects art to sensation or emotion.
Memento mori is the title of the exhibition of Luc Ming Yan. Here you can see a young artist’s (17) work produced with chinese ink and a hand carved bamboo feather. The topics are focused on birth- death and the fight in between. In the center of the exhibition is a cowboy staring at his own grave, ready to shoot but also surrounded by his enemies. Everything seems fixed at the coming end. Discover these cinematographic drawings at the basement Lib de l’U! Beside the exhibition was curated by Sarah Ning Yan and Lucas Stech, two young curators the artworld will hear from.
Was it like this, that Sophie Täuber Arp saw l’Aubette, the night of the inauguration in 1928 ? Theo von Doesburg had decorated this part of the modern amusement “cinébal”, a dancing, where you could see films and at the same time drink a beer or a cup of champain. As Doesburg put it, it’s better being in the picture and he designed the space as a de Stiyl painting. But there is now a kind of tristesse in these rooms designed to be crowded with people. You will never feel this emotion in the “bains municipaux” constructed by Fritz Belbo in 1908 in Strasbourg. To swim in this pool is like spinning back the weel of time for just one little century
That destruction can be art is a commonplace since Aristotle. For he proves the mimetic principle as a fundamental form of learning with the pleasure we have in seeing an image of a dead body. Quinceys “Murder considered as a fine art” destruction as art as does Bretons second manifesto of surrealism, where he indicates the simplest surrealistic action consists in going on the street and shooting blindly in the crowd. In the 20th century Art, destruction becomes with Gustav Metzger a destruction against art itself and with Chris Burden a destruction against the artist. The impetus for this exhibition is Tinguelys self-destroying machine “Hommage to New York”. In this work Mechanization as a whole, is an image of death and at the same time the overcoming of it. But at last the machine did not destroy itself entirely the 17 of march 1960 behind the MOMA. At the Tinguely Museum in Basel Under Destruction shows artworks dealing with the theme of destruction in a contemporary approach from the 1990 onwards. It is remarkable how many artists in this exhibition want to destroy the museum like Liz Larners in “Corner basher”.
