Birgit Jürgenssen - Works from the 1980s
12 Mar - 25 Apr 2009
'Abstract Art' had to cope with a tightrope walk, viz. a dangerous proximity to the ornamental, something avant-garde feminist art ventured to grapple with ever since it came into existence: the temptation of being decorative and the resistance necessary against it. After all, nothing less was at stake than its autonomous status.
Among the artists of her generation no one else had been more aware of this than Birgit Jürgenssen.
Ramin Schor, Birgit Jürgenssen. Mut trotz(t) Melancholie. In: female trouble. Die Kamera als Spiegel und Bühne weiblicher Inszenierungen. München, Pinakothek der Moderne, 2008.
It is only after her passing away that we understand that Birgit Jürgenssen knew more about the limitations and the temptations of humans, about the light in the shadow of the inferno - she also knew how to convey this in her work. During her lifetime the reception of her work was obstructively restrained. But her's is a story of accomplishment.
How then will the 1980s linger in the remembrance of the people? A work constantly created in the face of documented life, a continuous alternative history of art. After her works of dream-beauty terror in the 1970s she made transgressions in many directions. Photographs transform into raspy eccentricity, cycles of lust and loss of a Sklavin des Herzens (Slave of the Heart) are sprawling on aquarelles, the world occasionally hidden behind black silk, at times she is walking the cross, yet always with her spine erect; despair, finely drawn, is hidden to be detected.
"I know not what tomorrow will bring" is the last phrase written by Fernando Pessoa on the day before his death.
Since 2006 Galerie Hubert Winter has been showing in yearly intervals a selection from every decade of works of Birgit Jürgenssen (1949 - 2003).
A monograph about the work of the artist Birgit Jürgenssen, edited by Gabriele Schor and Abigail Solomon-Godeau with contributions of the editors and Elisabeth Bronfen, Inka Graeve-Ingelmann, Piet Meyer, Ramin Schor and many more, will be published in German and English in fall 2009 by
Hatje-Cantz.
Among the artists of her generation no one else had been more aware of this than Birgit Jürgenssen.
Ramin Schor, Birgit Jürgenssen. Mut trotz(t) Melancholie. In: female trouble. Die Kamera als Spiegel und Bühne weiblicher Inszenierungen. München, Pinakothek der Moderne, 2008.
It is only after her passing away that we understand that Birgit Jürgenssen knew more about the limitations and the temptations of humans, about the light in the shadow of the inferno - she also knew how to convey this in her work. During her lifetime the reception of her work was obstructively restrained. But her's is a story of accomplishment.
How then will the 1980s linger in the remembrance of the people? A work constantly created in the face of documented life, a continuous alternative history of art. After her works of dream-beauty terror in the 1970s she made transgressions in many directions. Photographs transform into raspy eccentricity, cycles of lust and loss of a Sklavin des Herzens (Slave of the Heart) are sprawling on aquarelles, the world occasionally hidden behind black silk, at times she is walking the cross, yet always with her spine erect; despair, finely drawn, is hidden to be detected.
"I know not what tomorrow will bring" is the last phrase written by Fernando Pessoa on the day before his death.
Since 2006 Galerie Hubert Winter has been showing in yearly intervals a selection from every decade of works of Birgit Jürgenssen (1949 - 2003).
A monograph about the work of the artist Birgit Jürgenssen, edited by Gabriele Schor and Abigail Solomon-Godeau with contributions of the editors and Elisabeth Bronfen, Inka Graeve-Ingelmann, Piet Meyer, Ramin Schor and many more, will be published in German and English in fall 2009 by
Hatje-Cantz.