Focus
The Focus section is an ever-changing curation of available works.
"Wir sind das Volk – We are the people". These words make up the work "Four Words" by Henrike Nauman that inspired the current Focus selection of works by 16 artists: Who is „we"? What is „a people"? Is there any other issue under as much tension and renegotiation these days? The dimensions in which the selected works approach it are as diverse and specific as the situation is complex: from the individual solidarity and stuggles in intimate relationships to the experience of collective participation and community, from the deconstruction of hierarchical role models or populist attemps to the emancipatory education of the public.
Price: 3500 €
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Price: 13500 €
Price: 25000 €
Wall tattoo from a right-wing mail order company on woodchip wallpaper from the early 90s (4 parts), 50 x 40 cm each, Ed. 5 + 2AP
Mixed textiles (sewed), vinyl paint 133 x 196 cm
Mixed media, video on vintage television set, SD video, 4:3, color, silent, loop; collaboration with Andreas Siekmann, Martin Ebner and Klaus Weber), dimensions variable
Text by Alice Creischer:
over the snow, and even then we used to work sixteen hours. They often knelt down to feed us as we stood by the machine. For we would not step away from it until we fainted. We saw clearly that pleasure is nothing but a mental blackout, a dereliction of consciousness because it fails to attain the fullness of self-love but then, once it believes itself in possession of the desired object, takes a seat, at its leisure, and expires. So that consciousness may finally be silent, we labor in the unwavering expectation of such consummation, unquenched and so with constant wakefulness, a sparse flow of nervous organs never at peace, from neck to shoulder blade and back. And when we work, it is at bottom not because we wish to live; all we desire is to become unconscious. Ah, and the fruits of our labors, which sustain our continued existence, prevent complete unconsciousness and induce only the impotence of a swoon that is merely the imperfect oblivion from which we wake up every time tostrive for it afresh.
The time desolate of work is empty, it trickles away untamed and unpaid, and I myself am such time, sitting in the rooms, stagnant the way old air is stagnant, motionless and untamed and unconverted into money, and so I feel that, unlike the movie stars, I am most mortal. Hence my decision: it is essential for me to regard myself as an outcome (a product)—and, I add vindictively, I want to make a deal. The future is a home stretch: what is on hand, what is in demand, what can be secured. And quite personally, I will recover what I have lost along the way: new classifications, new meaning, new work.
Fine Art Print on Hahnemühle paper, 50 x 70 cm, Ed. 2 + 1AP
Transferred 16 mm film, 4:3, color, sound, 14:03 min, Ed 7 + 2AP
Pencil, watercolor on paper, 43.2 x 35.5 cm
1/100 scale model, acrylic, sand, soil, polystyrene, wood 87 x 150 x 150 cm
Chrome steel, plastic, 115 x 54.9 x 81.6 cm, Ed. 5 & 2AP
Multichannel 4K video installation, color, stereo, 546 min, Ed. 7 & 2AP
It’s all not so simple, unfortunately. Right-wing, centrist, left-wing populism, the post-factual era, disunited and manipulated societies—it feels like an apocalyptic downward spiral, but apocalyptic moods are unhelpful. Disunion is unhelpful. The fact is: What agitates some today fills others with serenity and courage. Where emerging forms of government trigger some people’s flight instincts, others believe they are represented at long last. Where elaborate critique runs out of oxygen, unheard voices swell to a new volume. But it may well be that in the end everyone will feel like they have been taken for a ride. A sharp swing to the right? Leftist resistance? The rationality of the center? Caught up in old political schemata and systems of belief, people across the mental spectrums ignite lines of conflict within the public spirit that awaken demons of antagonism. Mario Pfeifer chose a different path. He conducted interviews with nine people, giving them the room to speak. Each is asked the same questions, each is allotted the same media space and time. The speakers remain anonymous, their functions unspecified, but the viewer quickly gathers: most of them are from Saxony, they helped found Pegida, they are a trade unionist or the mayor of a small town, a concerned businessman or a critic of Islam, a psychoanalyst or a conflict researcher. All of them earnest people who share their understandable thoughts on German society today with the camera, telling stories of their disenchantments and insights, their involvements and their hopes for society. No agitation, no populism, and instead people who speak intently and calmly. What to make of what they say? You won’t know until you listen. Reasoned political opinion—not always easy to come by—is a genuine attainment of focused attention. To watch means to follow the speaker’s thoughts and think for yourself. For nine hours, face to face. No Like buttons, no Twitter shortcuts for arguments that take time, no rapidly tuning in and out again as you zap through (un)congenial worldviews and opinion templates. Mario Pfeifer constructs a democratic space out of the time of unabridged speech and the succession of perspectives that, in this instance, defy alignment with a simple polar antagonism. His film is a contribution to political education and the search for consensus in the face of intensifying speechlessness and isolation, at a time of increasingly brutal contentions over reality and more and more irrational dialogues. Pfeifer’s project would seem to draw conclusions from the observation that the aspirations to greater solidarity behind leftist politics and artistic critique are manifestly losing traction and at worst even fuel rather than check processes of social disunion. Because leftists and artists tend to ignore, or fail to take seriously, what is going on beyond the islands on which their lives are lived and their beliefs widely shared? Because they champion openness and plurality of opinion but never spell out what that would mean? Because we have lost sight of the fact that a polity must listen to itself in order to work through the full extent of its internal differences and understand its potential fracture lines? On Fear and Education, Disenchantment and Justice, Protest and Disunion in Saxony / Germany" was commissioned by Kirsa Geiser for Mario Pfeifer’s solo exhibition at the Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst Leipzig, which closes on January 8. Pfeifer’s film will be on view indefinitely at KOW. The complete material may also be found on the project's website.
Transferred Super 8 film, 3:2, color, silent, Ed. 8 + 2AP
Synchronized two channel 4K video installation, 16:9, color, sound, 13:20 min, Ed. 5 + 2AP
Acrylic on canvas 100 x 100 cm
Video, b/w, sound, 16:9, Ed. 10 & 1 AP
Fade-overs of found-footage sequences of mass assemblies and political demonstrations from the 1920’s thicken into a grey surface. Scarcely has the viewer’s gaze landed on a detail when the layers pile up over one another again. The video is based on scenes from Panzerkreuzer Potemkin (USSR, 1925), among others.
SD video, 4:3, color, sound (German language with English subtitles), 13:58 min, Ed. 5 + 2AP
Hiwa K about this work:
To me - as someone who has grown up under a dictatorship in Iraq -- the notion of a civil protest and repetitive forms of demonstration -- are an interesting object of study and intervention. Are the democratic forms of protest efficient and do they have an actual affect on change and strengthening democratic values? Or are they are just powerless forms of civil gathering without real political influence, and are slowly becoming just public rituals? A night before the action, I learnt about 1st of May anti-fascist demonstration and found it, from my perspective of frustration as a refugee, rather naïve. It had to do a lot with my experience of inevitability of a war, which cannot be stopped from happening through the means of citizen protest. In parallel, I thought about the uniformed visual message of pursuing a political position such as the longhaired pacifists or head-shaved neo-Nazis. With a hair clipper, I went to the anti-fascist gathering and started shaving my head when trying to talk to peace demonstrators and convince them to shave their heads too. I am trying to reclaim a bald head for everyone and free it form neo-Nazi references. At the same time I encountered a lot of oppositional opinions and by throwing myself into this situation I got to know how young people understand, follow and disseminate their understanding of anti-fascist position and the demonstration as a form of civil protest.
Photosilkscreen on rough cardboard, 114.7 x 82 cm
Translation:
Not even one
Not even one trace
Not even one trace has been able to demonstrate
Not even one trace has been able to demonstrate the ejaculation of the hanged
Sewn dyed cotton fabric approx. 62 x 69 cm Unique
Commissioned for Manifesta 11, Zürich (2016)
Acrylic, inkjet print on paper on aluminium, 58 x 40 cm each
HD video (3 Variations), 16:9, color, sound, Ed. 25 + 2AP
PROFILE
Featuring Igshaan Adams, Roger Ballen, Steven Cohen, Gabrielle Goliath, Dean Hutton, Banele Khoza, Gerald Machona, Buhlebezwe Siwani, Chuma Sopotela and Sue Williamson
Who speaks in the name of whom? In 2017, Candice Breitz will represent her country of birth at the 57th Venice Biennale – South Africa, a country in which the question of who may (or may not) legitimately occupy the space of representation, is particularly fraught. Recently, debates around the extent to which white South Africans can engage, portray or stand in alliance with black South Africans, have been amplified against the backdrop of a global right-wing backlash that seeks to reverse social justice gains. Can would-be allies whose very being is defined by socio-historical privilege, avoid simply entrenching such privilege as they endeavour to align themselves with communities who have been denied this privilege? Such questions lie both at the heart of Breitz’s Love Story, and at the core of Profile, a new work that responds to Breitz’s nomination as one of two artists who will represent South Africa in Venice this year (her work will appear alongside that of compatriot Mohau Modisakeng).
In Profile, a work that was conceived and shot in Cape Town in early 2017, Breitz absents herself from visibility before the camera, instead platforming ten prominent South African artists who might equally have been nominated to represent the country. As their collective appearance usurps Breitz’s presence, the implied self-portrait gives way to a polyphonic riff, imploding the very assumptions that conventionally guarantee the genre of portraiture. “My name is Candice Breitz,” the cast of voices insists intermittently, punctuating descriptions of who those before the camera are (or might be): man or woman, white or black, working or middle class…. Veering erratically between descriptors of race, class and gender, occupation and national belonging, the verbal palate of attributes and markers delivered by the artists varies wildly in credibility. Who is here as a self and who is here as an other?
“I’m Candice Breitz, and I approve this message,” the multi-voiced litany concludes, parodying the sentence that American presidential candidates are legally obliged to use as rhetorical authentication of their campaign ads during an electoral cycle. In the context of Profile, however, the sentence subverts the proof of authenticity it is supposed to furnish. Blurring the genre of self-portraiture with the formal language of electoral politicking and self-promotional branding, Profile re-distributes the heightened attention typically garnered by an artist due to a Venice appearance, to a range of fellow artists who – much like Breitz – appear intent on consciously disrupting any fixed notion of subjectivity. Dodging objectification, the artists featured in Profile confront the placatory ‘rainbow nation’ metaphor that is too readily applied to post-apartheid South Africa, with the country’s lived reality. In so doing, they extricate the question of who may legitimately speak for their nation in Venice from the regime of representation to prompt a debate around who should be able to speak in a discussion of the many who may not actually be the subjects when they are being spoken for and about in Venice.
Profile was commissioned by the South African Pavilion on the occasion of the 57th edition of the Venice Biennale, with the support of the South African Department of Arts and Culture and Connect Channel.