What art have I seen? Pirelli HangarsBicocci
Benni Bosetto’s ‘Rebecca’ – best read the Mousse Review.
Rirkrit Tiravanija’s ‘The House that Jack Built’ – no irony that Tiravanija just published a book called ‘On Making Less‘, and this is a vast installation. A good clue amongst the many dimensions of ‘hanging out’ (tea room, session space, giant jigsaw) is the snippet of video of Jacques Tati in a modernist waiting area with a midcentury modern chair.
Amongst the hanging out is a small display exploring the use of the palm as a device to indicate Africa as exotic and to make Italian holiday resorts enticingly different – a moment of post colonial visual analysis in a field of chill.
Anselm Kiefer ‘Seven Heavenly Palaces’ permanent and extended installation, originally the towers, now augmented with paintings.
What art have I seen? The Alchemists
Installation of Anselm Kiefer’s group of works dedicated to women variously excluded or written out for their knowledge of plants, medicine, transmutation and life.
On the one hand it is very much Kiefer, on the other, where in the past you could hear the tracked vehicles in the winter landscapes. These on the other hand might still be landscape but this is different. Some are fields of gold, whilst others might be polluted. I’m not sure there isn’t a question about whether alchemy doesn’t have an inherent complexity. Turning lead into gold probably isn’t a clean process.
The room these works are installed in was bombed by the Allies in WWII and has been restored though the caryatids have been left. The ceiling is painted rather than plaster. The floor is patched terrazzo.
The mirrors installed around the room add to the complexity. You can see why Kiefer liked this space.
And it is worth thinking about these as paintings. You can’t quite see the back of the canvas in the photo.
But Kiefer has a fabulous graphic ability
And this face could be from a graphic novel
We might have stereotyped these women as ugly, old, fat, hairy but Kiefer convinces us of their power
The catalogue provides fuller biographies to the extent we know them
The New Art Examiner has a good review of The Alchemists
What art have I seen? Wenders’ film Anselm
At Glasgow Film Theatre.
Wenders’ ‘Anselm’ is a very good equivalent of an exhibition catalogue for Kiefer’s installation in the Doge’s Palace, Venice 2022. All the background, the development through two versions of a younger Kiefer.
‘Anselm’ is more biographical than Sophie Fiennes’ ‘Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow’. That film as I remember it is more focused on the Studio at Barjac (discussed here Aesthetics of Uncivilisation). Wenders’ is more interested in what it is to be German.
‘Anselm’ discusses the relationship with Nazism and Heidegger (spoiler Wenders’ seems to think Heidegger was silent on Nazism, which he wasn’t, but Kiefer’s work, in particular a book featuring Heidegger’s brain succumbing to cancer, is totally clear… the last pages are all black…).
The question of what you would do as a German in 1930 or 1939 was left hanging. Putting on your Dad’s uniform and going places acting it out salutes is reopening the wound.
What art have I seen? Mass MOCA
This is part of Michael Oatman’s ‘All Utopias Fell’, a strange spin on solar energy and communication with the stars. The Jetstream is about 3 stories up and contains amongst other things a library and archive.
The three floors of Sol Lewitt’s work arranged Early, Mid and Late.
Explode Every Day – an inquiry into the phenomena of wonder – standout pieces by Michael Light’s ‘100 Suns’ (photos from the Los Alamos National Laboratories); Rachel Sussman’s ‘(Selected) History of the Space Time Continuum’; Ryan and Trevor Oakes’ drawings exploring perspective; Tristan Duke’s scratch holograms; and Julianne Swartz’ trembling, rattling ‘Bone Scores’.
Three works from the Hall Foundation by Anselm Kiefer, one of which immediately physically connected with Kilmahew.
CHRIS FREMANTLE 
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