Kaucyila Brooke & Volker Eichelmann
11 May - 16 Jun 2012
KAUCYILA BROOKE & VOLKER EICHELMANN
Chute
11 May - 16 June 2012
In May 2012, the Galerie Andreas Huber is showing the exhibition “Chute” with Kaucyila Brooke and Volker Eichelmann. “Chute” has many meanings, both in English as well as French: fall, drop, decline, decadence, waterfall. In both Brooke’s and Eichelmann’s works, investigating the various forms and interpretations of “fall” is central.
The photographs in Kaucyila Brooke’s series “The Last Time I Saw You” are named for the waterfalls that they depict. The exposure time of a half second, dictated by the available light, makes the rushing stream of water appear as a white line, in which no details of water can be recognized. The contemporary and historical representation of nature is the focus of her interest here. Her work leads her to differentiate the perception of landscape, garden, and natural phenomena, and fundamentally calls into question the category of nature. Kaucyila Brooke shoots on film with a large-format camera and develops the photograph prints herself in the darkroom. “The Last Time I Saw You” tells of a loss and the resulting fall into mourning, and is in part an allusion to the loss of the medium of analog photography.
There is a direct connection between this and “After Morandi and after GLH,” Kaucyila Brooke’s first completely digital photo project. The photographs show vases from the artist’s collection and are an homage to Giorgio Morandi. In the title, Kaucyila Brooke is not only addressing how artists engage with their predecessors and models, but also quite directly referring to the time after “GLH,” her father. Artists, generations, and media follow after one another, the new displaces the old. Brooke’s works evoke the feeling of a free fall through time, accompanied by loss, mourning, and memories.
Volker Eichelmann’s recent images and sculptures present a fall in the sense of decadence. “Cadent comes from the Latin cadere which means to fall. Decadent is the beautiful way to fall. It’s a very slow movement which has lots of beauty, you know. It can be a kind of self-killing in a beautiful way, a tragic way.”[1] The painting “Soirée Moratoire Noire” underscores the relation to the world of fashion. In the 1970s, Jacques de Bascher organized a party with just this title for Karl Lagerfeld and the Parisian high society. The character of Gilles de Rais, who has exerted a great fascination for a whole group of artists and writers, played an important role in how the evening was designed. Eichelmann’s works are largely caught up in this complex network of references. His images are entitled with the names of de Rais’s castles. The artist is fascinated by his fall–and decline–and the seductive power that emanates from him. For example, in “La-bas” Karl Joris Huysmans had his protagonist Durtal end up in a maelstrom of black magic and satanic rituals in the Paris of the 1880s, thus also revisiting de Rais’s attempts to enter a pact with the devil. Eichelmann’s working process is highly informed by Huysmans’s artistic procedures and the entanglements and confusions of the system of references. It is not up to him to solve the case. Rather he himself is one of the protagonists.
Chute
11 May - 16 June 2012
In May 2012, the Galerie Andreas Huber is showing the exhibition “Chute” with Kaucyila Brooke and Volker Eichelmann. “Chute” has many meanings, both in English as well as French: fall, drop, decline, decadence, waterfall. In both Brooke’s and Eichelmann’s works, investigating the various forms and interpretations of “fall” is central.
The photographs in Kaucyila Brooke’s series “The Last Time I Saw You” are named for the waterfalls that they depict. The exposure time of a half second, dictated by the available light, makes the rushing stream of water appear as a white line, in which no details of water can be recognized. The contemporary and historical representation of nature is the focus of her interest here. Her work leads her to differentiate the perception of landscape, garden, and natural phenomena, and fundamentally calls into question the category of nature. Kaucyila Brooke shoots on film with a large-format camera and develops the photograph prints herself in the darkroom. “The Last Time I Saw You” tells of a loss and the resulting fall into mourning, and is in part an allusion to the loss of the medium of analog photography.
There is a direct connection between this and “After Morandi and after GLH,” Kaucyila Brooke’s first completely digital photo project. The photographs show vases from the artist’s collection and are an homage to Giorgio Morandi. In the title, Kaucyila Brooke is not only addressing how artists engage with their predecessors and models, but also quite directly referring to the time after “GLH,” her father. Artists, generations, and media follow after one another, the new displaces the old. Brooke’s works evoke the feeling of a free fall through time, accompanied by loss, mourning, and memories.
Volker Eichelmann’s recent images and sculptures present a fall in the sense of decadence. “Cadent comes from the Latin cadere which means to fall. Decadent is the beautiful way to fall. It’s a very slow movement which has lots of beauty, you know. It can be a kind of self-killing in a beautiful way, a tragic way.”[1] The painting “Soirée Moratoire Noire” underscores the relation to the world of fashion. In the 1970s, Jacques de Bascher organized a party with just this title for Karl Lagerfeld and the Parisian high society. The character of Gilles de Rais, who has exerted a great fascination for a whole group of artists and writers, played an important role in how the evening was designed. Eichelmann’s works are largely caught up in this complex network of references. His images are entitled with the names of de Rais’s castles. The artist is fascinated by his fall–and decline–and the seductive power that emanates from him. For example, in “La-bas” Karl Joris Huysmans had his protagonist Durtal end up in a maelstrom of black magic and satanic rituals in the Paris of the 1880s, thus also revisiting de Rais’s attempts to enter a pact with the devil. Eichelmann’s working process is highly informed by Huysmans’s artistic procedures and the entanglements and confusions of the system of references. It is not up to him to solve the case. Rather he himself is one of the protagonists.