Nei giorni di apertura corale delle gallerie berlinesi la Johann Koenig ha presentato un bel lavoro di Michael Sailstorfer.
Eccovi alcuni scatti.
Press Release
Johann König,
Berlin is delighted to present over the forthcoming Gallery Weekend Michael
Sailstorfer’s Antiherbst [Anti-Autumn] — the fourth exhibition to be staged in
the former ST. AGNES Church. The gallery-goer is here confronted with an
extraordinary scenic spectacle: from a screen ostensibly hovering in the dark
room-space a lone-standing, fully-grown tree shines forth resplendently. It is
magnificent to behold, well-formed in its silhouette, the epitome of thriving
Nature, changing its shape only imperceptibly, evidently under the influence of
varying weather conditions. The rustling of its foliage fills the air.
For the primary
space in ST. AGNES with its monumental simplicity Sailstorfer has chosen a
large-format projection surface hung immediately in front of the former
altar-area in the central nave, so that the beholder can walk up to the tree,
his steps seeking as it were a dialogic rhythm matching the tree’s movements.
The origin of the work is Sailstorfer’s public Antiherbst project, realized in
the Emscherkunst.2013 exhibition on the Rhine dyke near Duisburg. In a
laborious and painstaking process, Sailstorfer and his team set to work on the
tree over several weeks: as, during the autumn, the tree shed the first of its
leaves, these were conserved, dyed green and re-attached to the tree with thin
cable ties. This long-term performance was documented on film and post-edited
so as to eliminate those sequences in which the ongoing work-processes were
visible. In the final result, one sees – in Sailstorfer’s words – “only the
image of the tree, whose leaves change, move and seem ever more unreal and
artificial, but, in contrast to the trees in the background, do not fall to the
ground”.
With Antiherbst
Sailstorfer has achieved a further Sisyphan labour, which, at first glance,
appears completely meaningless as a process, as a performance so to say, but
then becomes all the more meaningful in its filmic, aesthetic documentation.
Sailstorfer, it seems, is forever in search of the subtle in the banal, of the
non-humdrum in the humdrum.
In the former
Lady Chapel, Sailstorfer is exhibiting, for the first time in Germany, one of
his latest works. Reibungsverlust am Arbeitsplatz [Friction Losses at the
Work-Place] (2014) is a water-driven mill-wheel installed on a trailer, the
mill-wheel’s rotations setting a car-tyre turning. Continually driven forwards
and yet compelled to stay in the same spot, the tyre is forever wearing down
its rubber coating on the floor. The huge input of energy, visibly bodied forth
in the space-dominating mill-wheel, has no creative effect but, as it were,
visibly destroys and loses itself in nothingness. It is, one supposes, the
tyre’s fate that the mill which drives it on is the mill against which it
fights in vain – an image that is not without its comedy but that nevertheless
gives food for thought, applicable as it is to many situations in our own
lives.
Michael
Sailstorfer (b. 1979 Velden/Vils) lives and works in Berlin. He studied under
Olaf Metzel at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Munich and at Goldsmiths
College in London. His works are currently on display in his solo exhibition
Every piece is a new problem in the Contemporary Art Center, Cincinnati, Ohio
and can be seen, from October 2014 on, in the Rochester Art Center, Minnesota.
In Germany, Sailstorfer is this year opening solo presentations in the Haus am
Waldsee, Berlin and in the Museum Kurhaus Kleve. Sailstorfer’s works form part
of important museum collections such as the Städtische Galerie in the
Lenbachhaus, Munich, the Centre Pompidou Foundation, Paris, the Städelmuseum,
Frankfurt-on-Main or the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis.
