print February 1995

Gilbert & George

Gilbert & George’s approach to autobiography stems from a long tradition of social commentary in British art. They are as concerned with societal values and autobiography’s moral compass as they are with increasingly complex relations between individuals and the masses, and these concerns find graphic realization in their new work, “The Naked Shit Pictures.”

The subjects covered in these 16 paintings verge on the horrifying: human nudity, excrement, city streets, the masses. Gilbert & George themselves are the only common element. In these new paintings, Gilbert & George conjure up the true

print January 1995

Corrinne Wasmuht

For this exhibition, Corrinne Wasmuht produced two brightly colored, large paintings with deep perspectival fields. In both works, one feels as if one is looking through a microscope. The subject of both works seems at once easy to grasp and elusive. Though Wasmuht deals with medicine and nature, what kind of nature is it where soulless structures can be transformed into decorative and colorful ensembles?

Upon closer examination, it is clear that these paintings originate in textbooks of human and veterinary medicine. Each image depicts a cross section of tissue, thus, the images are fundamentally

print Summer 1994

Anne Loch

The seriality of Anne Loch’s work is essential to her conceptual project and also reveals her work’s connection to kitsch and the conventions of landscape. Loch’s new, large-format paintings pose the question of painting’s own legitimation in an idiosyncratic, yet obvious way. At first, they seem to have taken an individual path: pictures of deer against a pink background, tinged red at the edge; red rose blossoms—schematic diagrams made geometric on a black background; giant grapes, leaf and crystal formations, all demonstrate the artist’s direct confrontation with the environment.

Monumental,

print March 1994

Markus Lüpertz

A tour of the abstract and concrete, a lasting impression of expression, less so of technique, a decorative aftertaste, art-historical contextualization with Aleksey von Jawlensky, Paul Klee, Pablo Picasso, A. R. Penck, and Georg Baselitz among others. Markus Lüpertz titled the entire show after his series “Männer ohne Frauen—Parsifal” (Men without women—Parsifal). In the catalogue his work is described as reflecting an identity in constant development. The title refers, of course, to the medieval courtly romance of Wolfram von Eschenbach of the same name, and offers a bridge to Richard Wagner’s

print March 1994

“New Sculptures”

The city of Antwerp, the cultural capital of Europe in 1993, has maintained an outdoor sculpture park in Middenheim since 1950. There are about 450 works—ranging from Rodin to Calder to Zadkine—in the impressive Arenal, a large park with wooded and meadow areas. This exhibition of new sculptures is limited to one area of the park and serves to update the holdings in contemporary sculpture. Ten contemporary artists—Isa Genzken, Harald Klingelhöller, Per Kirkeby, Richard Deacon, Panamarenko, Didier Vermeiren, Thomas Schütte, Bernd Lohaus, Matt Mullican, and Juan Muñoz—placed their sculptures (

print January 1994

Stefan Höller

Pictures from the superior court in Düsseldorf—an unusual take for an art exhibition. The paintings of Stefan Höller speak as much to the viewer’s consciousness and attention as to his interest in contemporary (or historical) events in life, art, and politics. In these works Höller invokes Willy Spatz, Joseph Beuys, and Markus Wolf. Spatz was a late representative of the Düsseldorf school of painters. From 1887 to 1926, he was a professor at the academy there, and in 1913 he created a painting with scenes from German legal history for the large courtroom of the superior court. Beuys was a

print December 1993

Stephan Balkenhol

Stephan Balkenhol’s recent exhibition consisted of 12 small female nudes carved from a single block of wawa wood. The figure and pedestal are all of a piece, and seem to be worked from inside the wood—a technique that recalls his 57 penguins from 1991. Additionally, there are two round pictures, two drawings, and a “headless man” that are the same size as the nudes but in which the figures are fully clothed. (The headless man may be a reference to Dionysus of Paris, the third-century French martyr, who came to Paris from Rome and walked to St. Denis with his head in his hand after being

print November 1993

Thomas Struth

When photographed by Thomas Struth, sunflowers, yarrow, mallow, lilies, and delphinium express something very strange. In lieu of traditional interpretations of the flower—the rose as equivalent to love or the blood of Christ, the tulip as symbol of inflexibility, and the violet as evocative of youth and modesty—Struth’s flower photographs realistically capture the generative growth cycle of a plant. Unlike Robert Mapplethorpe’s photographs of flowers, these are never sexualized, rather, they seem undisturbed, peaceful, modest. Wherein, then, lies their attraction?

One could speculate that it

print October 1993

Wiebke Siem

In an anonymous lithograph from 1840, we see a Shaker meeting. The believers dance in two circles toward one another, segregated by sex. The two groups don’t touch each other. Difference, distance, and isolation between the sexes is the subject of these works. On the wall, in the background, the coats and hats of the dancers are hung in a very orderly fashion; within each group they are exactly the same, but each group is styled to be either masculine or feminine. This scene is alienating; it tells us of an esthetic of difference, and of a silence between the sexes that leads them both on a path

print Summer 1993

Georg Herold

One needed imagination and humor in order to enjoy this exhibition of Georg Herold’s work. For if one approached the work with tried and true ideas about art—questions about its sublimity, pedagogic intentions, or social relevance—one would simply laugh or nod in disbelief looking at his pot holders on wooden constructions. But this laughter, coupled with a joke or even cynicism, was generally stifled by Herold’s emphasis on the triviality of our daily life.

In these pieces, Herold worked playfully with pot holders. They are quite simply the materialization of a function, free of esthetic

print January 1993

Rosemarie Trockel, Andreas Schulze

Rosemarie Trockel and Andreas Schulze offered two perceptual models in this exhibition. On the one hand, there was a certain continuity, even familiarity to the show: works either knitted or painted in acrylic were installed to make an interesting exhibition. On the other hand, this exhibition was markedly different: in a game with their own traditions, the artists confronted themselves and each other by way of their works.

Trockel’s eight works and Schulze’s three were shown in separate rooms. Both artists seemed to work in their individual mediums and to remain faithful in form to their previous

print December 1992

Philip Akkerman

Philip Akkerman’s 30 self-portraits pose numerous problems: what lies behind the scenario of one’s own portrait? Is it perhaps a philosophical model of the presentation of the artistic self? Or, through art, an unrestrained exercise of ego? Or a serious contemplation on the essence of existence? Or, perhaps, is it a certain freedom inherent to this genre of art, through which the artist can become the impresario of his or her own appearance?

Though Akkerman’s self-portraits range from 1981 to 1992, they share a common trait: in all of them, the artist makes eye contact with the viewer. Akkerman’s

Norbert Messler