Simon Wachsmuth
16 May - 31 Jul 2008
SIMON WACHSMUTH
"acht minuten"
The show acht minuten at Galerie Hohenlohe presents new works by Simon Wachsmuth. They deal with literary forms of time and the past, especially with their perception and construction – a theme that has been occupying the artist since his installation at the documenta 12 in Kassel. The show’s title is related to the finite nature of the speed of light, whereby objects are not seen as they are in our present time, but as they were in our past. We perceive the sun as it looked eight minutes ago.
The film “Persepolis - Where We Were Then, Where We Are Now”, which was a part of Simon Wachsmuth’s documenta 12 installation, is the basis for his reflections on the relationship between the present and the past. The freeze frame presentation of an archaeological dig is contrasted to a moving camera filming the length of an antique frieze. Its figures are slowly scanned: depictions of subjugated foreign peoples, who must pay tributes to the king, offset by minimalistically ordered Persian soldiers. Suggested are the structures of state in that age, or in our time, of political governments. Four photos made during the film’s shooting establish the correlation between the filmed objects and the cameras. The show also includes an installation of file-card boxes that contain an antiquarian collection of pages about Iran. The unknown collector obsessively assembled pictures from the media in the 1950s and 60s: maps of historical migrations and of petroleum production, ethnographic material and clippings from newspapers and tabloid magazines. The role an individual author has in the creation of his version of contemporary history is made clear by this material, thus presenting another variation on how the view of history is a construction.
The most recent group of works finally clarify what this show is actually about. Also here historical subjects serve as models. Opposite the other works in the show are three black-coated sheet-iron plates upon which rectangular shapes are printed. The shapes, at first appearing to be abstract, are similar to notes and pieces of paper that have been hung up. Indeed it is the photo material found on Aby Warburg’s famous Mnemosyne Atlas screens. Simon Wachsmuth has computer-generated these and silk-screened them as white silhouettes onto the large-dimensioned plates.
Once considered an art history tool for acquiring an understanding of images, the screens of the Atlas developed into pictures about pictures, or a “construction of pictures that promote knowledge: pictures of knowledge”.1
Simon Wachsmuth’s “pictures” are not conventional panels however. Between the black and white panels the artist has placed reflecting magnetic spheres that integrate the here and now into Warburg’s world of images. Mirroring both the exhibit and its viewers is in itself a part of the complex layering of time. The artist refers to the historian Reinhart Koselleck: History only exists by being made contemporary and therefore cannot be brought to a close. Thus history is only possible within the constellation of past, present and future.
Through the show, Simon Wachsmuth uses various means of viewing to reveal the fragility of our perception. This is not determined by the prearranged setting that the artist has realized in the gallery: the ordering of the objects remains loose, open and also often disturbing.
1“Konstruktion von Bildern, die Wissen befördern: Bilder des Wissens”. Karl Sierek: Foto, Kino und Computer, Aby Warburg als Medientheoretiker, Hamburg 2007, p. 129.
"acht minuten"
The show acht minuten at Galerie Hohenlohe presents new works by Simon Wachsmuth. They deal with literary forms of time and the past, especially with their perception and construction – a theme that has been occupying the artist since his installation at the documenta 12 in Kassel. The show’s title is related to the finite nature of the speed of light, whereby objects are not seen as they are in our present time, but as they were in our past. We perceive the sun as it looked eight minutes ago.
The film “Persepolis - Where We Were Then, Where We Are Now”, which was a part of Simon Wachsmuth’s documenta 12 installation, is the basis for his reflections on the relationship between the present and the past. The freeze frame presentation of an archaeological dig is contrasted to a moving camera filming the length of an antique frieze. Its figures are slowly scanned: depictions of subjugated foreign peoples, who must pay tributes to the king, offset by minimalistically ordered Persian soldiers. Suggested are the structures of state in that age, or in our time, of political governments. Four photos made during the film’s shooting establish the correlation between the filmed objects and the cameras. The show also includes an installation of file-card boxes that contain an antiquarian collection of pages about Iran. The unknown collector obsessively assembled pictures from the media in the 1950s and 60s: maps of historical migrations and of petroleum production, ethnographic material and clippings from newspapers and tabloid magazines. The role an individual author has in the creation of his version of contemporary history is made clear by this material, thus presenting another variation on how the view of history is a construction.
The most recent group of works finally clarify what this show is actually about. Also here historical subjects serve as models. Opposite the other works in the show are three black-coated sheet-iron plates upon which rectangular shapes are printed. The shapes, at first appearing to be abstract, are similar to notes and pieces of paper that have been hung up. Indeed it is the photo material found on Aby Warburg’s famous Mnemosyne Atlas screens. Simon Wachsmuth has computer-generated these and silk-screened them as white silhouettes onto the large-dimensioned plates.
Once considered an art history tool for acquiring an understanding of images, the screens of the Atlas developed into pictures about pictures, or a “construction of pictures that promote knowledge: pictures of knowledge”.1
Simon Wachsmuth’s “pictures” are not conventional panels however. Between the black and white panels the artist has placed reflecting magnetic spheres that integrate the here and now into Warburg’s world of images. Mirroring both the exhibit and its viewers is in itself a part of the complex layering of time. The artist refers to the historian Reinhart Koselleck: History only exists by being made contemporary and therefore cannot be brought to a close. Thus history is only possible within the constellation of past, present and future.
Through the show, Simon Wachsmuth uses various means of viewing to reveal the fragility of our perception. This is not determined by the prearranged setting that the artist has realized in the gallery: the ordering of the objects remains loose, open and also often disturbing.
1“Konstruktion von Bildern, die Wissen befördern: Bilder des Wissens”. Karl Sierek: Foto, Kino und Computer, Aby Warburg als Medientheoretiker, Hamburg 2007, p. 129.