Kiefer and Sebald

Anselm Kiefer, Buch (The Secret Life of Plants) mixed media on lead

Tim Hill has written a nice article in the New Statesman that references similarities between W.G. Sebald and the painter Anselm Kiefer.  Recommended reading.

Rings of Saturn (The Exhibition)

Installation view – Rings of Saturn, 2006 (Photograph courtesy Tate Photography)

Over the past three years I have written about a number of exhibitions inspired in one way or another by the work of W.G. Sebald.  Without doubt, the book that seems to have the most influence on visual artists has been The Rings of Saturn.  A reader of Vertigo has pointed out that the Tate Modern held a group exhibition from September to December 2006 entitled Rings of Saturn, which included eight artists.  (I began Vertigo in January 2007.)  Here is the exhibition blurb from the Tate’s website:

The title of this exhibition is borrowed from the German writer WG Sebald’s 1995 novel, an elegiac and fragmentary meditation upon history, its lost customs and eccentric figures. Sebald’s anonymous narrator wanders the melancholy landscape of East Anglia, discovering remnants of the past that prompt meticulously researched digressions interspersed with enigmatic photographs. Taking Sebald’s tone and method as an inspiration, the exhibition is similarly allusive and associative. The work of Steven Claydon and Thomas Zipp explores the nature of history and its lesser-known protagonists, and its critical moments of transition, energy and change.

David Noonan’s prints bring together fragments of the past with the uncanny power of a half-remembered dream, while David Wojnarowicz’s photographs evoke a ruined, dissolute city haunted by the archetypal figure of Arthur Rimbaud. Buried traditions of European folk and fairy tales resurface in the work of Nathalie Djurberg and Dorota Jurczak. Thomas Helbig takes existing objects, such as kitsch figurines, and fashions them into grotesque forms, bringing disturbing new associations to the trace of the original object, while Saul Fletcher’s photographs provide a reflection upon solitude, personal identity and death.

At the Tate website there is a bit of information about each of the artists in the exhibition, along with a few images.  It does not appear that a catalog was issued.

W.G. Sebald and the Altermodern

The work of W.G. Sebald continues to provide inspiration and intellectual underpinning for exhibitions of contemporary art.  In 2007 there was Waterlog, in 2008 there was After Nature, and now in 2009 we have Altermodern, the recent Tate Triennial curator by Nicolas Bourriaud:

Usually an exhibition begins with a mental image with which we need to reconnect, and whose meanings constitute a basis for discussion with the artists.  The research that has preceded the Triennial 2009, however, had its origins in two elements: the idea of the archipelago, and the writings of a German émigré to the UK, Winfred Georg Sebald.  the archipelago (and its kindred forms, the constellation and the cluster) functions here as a model representing the multiplicity of global cultures…

As for Sebald’s writings – wanderings between ’signs’, punctuated by black and white photographs – they appear to me as emblematic of a mutation in our perception of space and time, in which history and geography operate a cross-fertilisation, tracing out paths and weaving networks: a cultural evolution at the very heart of this exhibition.  The two concepts – the archipelago and Sebald’s excursions – do not intertwine arbitrarily: they represent the paths I followed led by my initial intuition: that of the death of postmodernism as the starting point for reading the present.

Bourriaud’s thesis is dense and impossible to condense.  It’s also supplanted with essays (or lectures) by Okwui Enwezor, T.J. Demos, and Carsten Höller, as well as an “Official Document” delivered by the International Necronautical Society (one of whose founders is the novelist Tom McCarthy).   Suffice it to say that one of the central topics that Bourriaud and others are trying to define is what comes after post-modernism:

Altermodernism can be defined as that moment when it became possible for us to produce something that made sense starting from an assumed heterochrony, that is, from a vision of human history as constituted of multiple temporalities, disdaining the nostalgia of the avant-garde and indeed for any era – a positive vision of chaos and complexity.  It is neither a petrified kind of time advancing in loops (postmodernism) nor a linear vision of history (modernism), but a positive experience of disorientation through an art-form exploring all dimensions of the present, tracing lines in all directions of time and space.

Sebald comes into the picture as an obvious – and perhaps accessible – example of heterochrony and altermodernism.  The other main themes of Bourriaud’s exhibition will also be familiar to any reader of Sebald: Exile, Travels, and Borders.

Altermodern – the book – has been designed by the cult design firm of M/M (Paris).  Although I’m not consistently a fan of their work, which often appears more retro-hippie than post-Helvetica, they provide the perfect packaging for a project in which the curatorial concept dominates the art and the artists.   On page after page the artwork disappears into or spreads across the gutter; in the end, Altermodern fails the test Bourriaud sets out in his opening sentence: “to establish a balance between the artworks and the narrative that acts as a form of sub-titling.”  In the book, at least, the “sub-titling” dominates.   Bourriaud likens the curator’s role to something on the order of an ethical Noah, determining which species will survive and which won’t.  “The very act of picking out certain images and distinguishing them from the rest of the production by exposing them is an ethical responsibility.  Keeping the ball in the air and the game alive: that is the function of the critic or the curator.”

After After Nature

Last week I was in New York City and had the opportunity to see two-thirds of the exhibition After Nature at the new New Museum. (The exhibition is opening in stages and the installation of the second floor – the floor which “sets the tone for the exhibition”, according to curator Massimiliano Gioni – was not ready when I was there.) After enjoying the panoramic views of New York from the rooftop I took the stairs down and began the exhibition on the fourth floor. Stepping into a gallery, I immediately encountered a slim woman in jeans and shirt writhing in slow motion on the floor, long hair covering her face most of the time. Perhaps I was seeing the exhibition in reverse, I realized; but it was too late.

Maurizio Cattelan, untitled, 2007 (taxidermied horse skin, fiberglass resin) [installation photograph from site other than the New Museum]

The exhibition’s title, of course, is borrowed from W.G. Sebald’s book-length poem After Nature. Gioni explains that his exhibition “aspires to a similar hallucinatory confusion [as Sebald's writings], a conflation of temporalities, a blurring of facts and fictions – an exhibition as a visual novel or wunderkammer.” In addition to Sebald, the acknowledged guiding spirits are filmmaker Werner Herzog and novelist Cormac McCarthy. Rather than trying to define anything, After Nature seems to spiral outward in multiple directions: “offended sceneries and scorched earth”, “private cosmologies and universes untouched by man”, “ancient traditions and arcane faiths”, and the “bliss” or “madness” we might experience at the end of the world. There are already a number of exhibition reviews online already, some of which point out the exhibition’s lack of focus. But whether that’s a problem or not (a characteristic like “focus” usually isn’t a goal for exhibitions at the New Museum), there are wonderful pieces to be seen, including Maurizio Cattelan’s untitled (2007) comic/apocalyptic horse implanted some twenty feet off the ground into a gallery wall and Robert Kusmirowski’s Unacabine (2008), a replica of “Unibomber” Theodore Kaczynski’s cabin. And then there was the writhing woman, who, it turns out, is one of several performers in Tino Sehgal’s piece Instead of allowing something to rise up to your face dancing bruce and dan and other things (2000).

On the way out, I stopped and bought the eponymous shrink-wrapped exhibition catalog for After Nature ($24.95). Imagine my surprise when I discovered that it consisted of a dust wrapper that unfolded to six panels neatly tucked around a Modern Library paperback copy of W.G. Sebald’s After Nature ($11.95). That’s a nifty mark-up for what is essentially a dust jacket. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an entire book appropriated like this before. The wrapper includes an essay by Gioni and a checklist noted as accurate “as of June 25, 2008″.

After Sebald: Art in New York Summer 2008

[Still from Werner Herzog's Lessons of Darkness, 1992]

Two new exhibitions in New York claim W.G. Sebald for inspiration. The first is the New Museum’s After Nature. According to their website part of the exhibition will be viewable as of July 9 (the 3rd and 4th floors), while the dates for the full exhibition (including the 2nd floor) are July 17 – September 21, 2008. Here’s a blurb from their website:

Departing from the fictional documentaries of Werner Herzog and drawing its title from W.G. Sebald’s visionary book of the same name, “After Nature” unfolds as a visual novel, depicting a future landscape of wilderness and ruins. Bringing together an international and multigenerational group of contemporary artists, filmmakers, writers, and outsiders, many of whom are showing in an American museum for the first time, the exhibition is a feverish examination of humankind’s relationship to nature. Organized by Massimiliano Gioni, Director of Special Exhibitions, the show spans three floors and includes over ninety works.

Part dystopian fantasy, part ethnographic museum of a lost civilization that eerily resembles our own, “After Nature” brings together artists and artworks that possess a strange, prophetic intensity. When seen in this context, Zoe Leonard’s giant sculpture of a crippled tree, Maurizio Cattelan’s fallen horse, Reverend Howard Finster’s delirious sermon cards, and Eugene Von Bruenchenhein’s apocalyptic finger paintings resonate like a requiem for a vanishing planet.

Artists such as Fikret Atay, Roger Ballen, Robert Kusmirowski, Diego Perrone, and Artur Zmijewski seem fascinated by mystic apparitions, arcane rites, and spiritual illuminations, while Allora and Calzadilla, Nancy Graves, and William Christenberry depict a universe in which the traces of humans have been erased and new ecological systems struggle to find a precarious balance.

The works of Huma Bhabha, Berlinde De Bruyckere, and Thomas Schütte share an archaic quality. Their magic realism transforms sculpture into myth-making and gives birth to a cast of fantastical creatures, including sylvan beings, totemic figures, and neo-primitive idols. These elements also find life in Tino Sehgal’s intricate choreographies: for the duration of the exhibition dancers carry out gestures that could be seen as mysterious rituals and states of ecstasy. Recuperating ancient techniques, Pawel Althamer uses grass and animal intestines to produce vulnerable sculptures and puppets to arrive at a new form of storytelling. Other works, like the animations of Nathalie Djurberg, the imaginary maps of Roberto Cuoghi, or the video travelogue of Erik van Lieshout, guide viewers to the edge of the earth, taking us for a walk in the fictional woods of our near future, while expressing a sincere preoccupation for the world as it is now.

The exhibition will include work by Allora and Calzadilla, Pawel Althamer, Micol Assaël, Fikret Atay, Roger Ballen, Huma Bhabha, Maurizio Cattelan, William Christenberry, Roberto Cuoghi, Bill Daniel, Berlinde De Bruyckere, Nathalie Djurberg, Reverend Howard Finster, Nancy Graves, Werner Herzog, Robert Kusmirowski, Zoe Leonard, Klara Liden, Erik van Lieshout, Diego Perrone, Thomas Schütte, Dana Schutz, Tino Sehgal, August Strindberg, Eugene Von Bruenchenhein, and Artur Zmijewski.

“After Nature” is made possible by the Leadership Council of the New Museum. Major support provided by David Teiger. Additional support provided by Kati Lovaas, Randy Slifka, and the Toby Devan Lewis Emerging Artists Exhibitions Fund.

The second exhibition occurs across the East River in Brooklyn at a place called Jack the Pelican Presents. It’s a collaborative exhibition between artists Tyler Coburn and Sebastian Craig called Ghostwriters and it runs only from July 10 – August 10, 2008:

The first collaboration between New Yorker Tyler Coburn and Londoner Sebastian Craig, “Ghostwriters” is an imaginary account of Brooklyn narrated in drawing, architecture and prose.

Building upon the work of Robert Smithson and W.G. Sebald, among others, Coburn and Craig will transform Jack the Pelican Presents into a sparse visitor center, populated with an evolving array of objects and interventions, including Craig’s projected 3D models of the gallery space; oversize, folded halftone prints of local buildings; and a binder filled with text documentation of improvisatory performances that Coburn staged, at Craig’s request, throughout the neighborhood.

The collaboration is long overdue: Coburn first met Craig in London in 2006 at i-cabin, a project space and publisher Craig oversees. In i-cabin’s peripatetic activity and in Craig’s work, which has been exhibited at the Serpentine Gallery, London, and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York, Coburn observed refreshing, innovative approaches to institutional critique. So after completing his first New York solo show, this past spring at MARCH Gallery, and rounding out screenings and exhibitions at CRG Gallery and Gavin Brown’s passerby, respectively, Coburn invited Craig to collaborate.