Lothringer Studio, Lothringer Str. 13, 81667 München
As some of you know, I have been speaking about setting up a reading group for some time. This was supposed to take place on Mondays and the idea was you would read but not socialise, ie. not drink. It is why I started writing “Sad Mondays” for Porcile, which essentially was such a one-person book club. Well, I am trying again this time on Tuesday, and I am going to call it “Sad Tuesday” – hah! – because I am so inventive.
We will be reading texts loosely relating to Paul Valentin’s exhibition. The first are as follows:
1. Heidegger’s “Origin of the Work of Art” (we need to split this up into 2 sessions I think)
2. Meyer Schapiro “The Still Life as a Personal Object – a Note on Heidegger and Van Gogh.
3. Jacques Derrida “Restitutions of the Truth in Pointing”
The first session will take place on Tuesday, the 2nd of May at 6 pm, at the Lothringer Studio upstairs. I suspect it will last an hour or so. Hope to see some of you there! If you would like a copy of the text, please email me directly at contact@gig-munich.com.
Another studio visit and resulting exhibition text:
I owe you the truth in painting and I will give it to you
Cézanne
…d’un seul pas franchi…
Derrida
The small problem of truth has been occupying me recently: the truth in painting, as promised by another “sauvage raffiné,” Paul Cézanne. A long time ago, it took a painting by Vincent van Gogh, Old Shoes with Laces (1886), for the German philosopher Martin Heidegger to recognise what this truth might be and for him, the artwork became defined through its revelation of this truth. We now consider ourselves too sophisticated to think that a painting of some worn-out shoes reveals something so profound about the peasant woman’s being that there is no other way this can be grasped. And yet a little of this heideggerian desire remains. I find we still look for truth in painting despite thinking it unlikely. Or at least, I do.
At the height of the pandemic Stefanie Ullmann would walk and run in the rose gardens at the Isar, in May, when the magnolias are in bloom. These caught her attention – I remember how bright that spring was, and how vibrant the greens. But again it took a painting by van Gogh, this time, Blossoming Almond Branch in a Glass (1888) for her to begin painting from memory a series of small canvases with flowers. A second series of watercolours followed. The oil paintings share van Goghs’ shimmering green-yellow palette as well as his strong horizontal and vertical lines.
Vincent van Gogh, Sprig of flowering almond in a glass, 1888, oil on canvas, 24.5 cm x 19.5 cm Credits: Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)
When I look at these paintings I find myself standing in Heidegger’s shoes. There is a truth in Stefanie Ullmann’s work that has to do with his schematic definition. On the one hand he claims, art has long been thought as formed matter, in other words as a “Zeug,” translated by Derrida as a “product,” more commonly in English translations of Heidegger’s essay as “equipment.” And these paintings here, especially the abstract ones, have this workman-like quality of being built, almost brick by brick, layer by layer. Occasionally Stefanie Ullmann even uses a spatula like a masonry trowel. And yet, as Derrida in his interpretation of Heidegger’s argument rightly notes, an artwork is more than a product or Zeug because it does what no other product can – it resembles a thing, “Ding.” It is as if it were not produced. Thus, an artwork is a product that is also more than a product, because it crosses over, steps into the realm of the thing. In the same way, Ullmann’s paintings enjoy this self-sufficiency. Despite their lightness, they feel as sturdy as earth or rock or tree, untouched by human hand.
The point of painting is – for Van Gogh, Heidegger, Derrida etc. – that this step crossing from thing to product and back again occurs within. Painting shows how tightly things, Zeug and artworks interlace.
Paul Valentin, Doxa, 2023, exhibition viewPaul Valentin, Doxa, 2023, exhibition viewPaul Valentin, Doxa, 2023, exhibition viewPaul Valentin, Doxa, 2023, 3D rendering, print on smartX, size variablePaul Valentin, Doxa, 2023, 3D rendering, print on smartX, size variablePaul Valentin, Doxa, 2023, 3D rendering, print on smartX, size variablePaul Valentin, Doxa, 2023, 3D rendering, print on smartX, size variablePaul Valentin, Doxa, 2023, exhibition viewPaul Valentin, Doxa, 2023, 3D rendering, print on smartX, size variablePaul Valentin, Doxa, 2023, 3D rendering, print on smartX, size variablePaul Valentin, Doxa, 2023, 3D rendering, print on smartX, size variablePaul Valentin, Doxa, 2023, 3D rendering, print on smartX, size variablePaul Valentin, Doxa, 2023, exhibition viewPaul Valentin, Doxa, 2023, 3D rendering, print on smartX, size variablePaul Valentin, Doxa, 2023, 3D rendering, print on smartX, size variablePaul Valentin, Doxa, 2023, 3D rendering, print on smartX, size variablePaul Valentin, Doxa, 2023, 3D rendering, print on smartX, size variablePaul Valentin, Doxa, 2023, exhibition viewPaul Valentin, Doxa, 2023, 3D rendering, print on smartX, size variablePaul Valentin, Doxa, 2023, 3D rendering, print on smartX, size variable
Photos: Lukas Hoffmann
What is the truth?1 Now there is a metaphysical question for you. Hardcore baby, yeah. That’s what we are talking about. What. Is. The. Truth. Heidegger turns around and points, there – there – to the temple, a Greek one I guess but no one really knows, or cares, as it really doesn’t matter; he points to the temple nestling among rocky hills, its columns in picturesque disarray. We can see it on Paul Valentin’s holiday snapshot. The temple as a work of art sets forth the truth. If you are looking for the truth you can find it there.
When I first encountered Heidegger’s essay as an undergraduate, “The Origin of the Work of Art” was presented to me as a critique of representation, specifically of mimesis. I admit I didn’t get it at the time. Now that I do, Heidegger does clearly state that the kind of truth he associates with the artwork has nothing to do with a painter’s capacity to produce resemblance. Truth here is not marked by the distinction between the model and the copy, the original and the fake, and in this sense his argument is anti-mimetic. Instead, he looks to the point of origin of the art work, and finds truth (with the help of van Gogh’s painting) in the way being is revealed. “Aletheia”, he claims, is the Greek term for the “unconcealedness of beings.”
This means we do not look at an artwork in a habitual way, as a thing or a piece of equipment. Heidegger rejects the interpretation of the artwork as either a substrate bearing traits, a manifold of sensations or as formed matter. These for him are various forms of assault on being. He argues that not to fall under the spell of this violence, we have to look at the temple and see how it both creates a world for us, in the sense of giving our lives its meaning, and also shelters this world by placing it back firmly on the earth, which only through the creation of this world emerges as ground. The temple as the work of art is Aletheia.
Paul Valentin creates his temple of of the Greek goddess Aletheia using digital software. It has the usual pediments and carved reliefs of mythological figures. He then, also digitally, breaks this temple up, fragments it, ages it artificially and destroys it. He takes up these fragments – still digitally – and reassembles them in workshop that shares many of the same visual conditions as the Lothringer 13 Studio space, like some kind of virtual archeologist. The reassembled fragments are photographed, printed and scattered across gallery room.
Thus there is no truth in Paul Valentin’s temple. Even the snapshot we see is a composite of an old photograph and an ai generated image, with some photoshopping in between. His temple does not, cannot, reveal anything. It is not even there. And yet it shows how mimesis is always at work, even in Heidegger’s argument. How does Heidegger reject the three modes in which we tend to think the artwork? By looking at how their claim to truth compares with the artwork’s truth, its revelation of being. Isn’t this also what mimesis is? I mean, isn’t the relation between a model and a copy not so much about resemblance as it is about good and bad resemblance – to what extent is the copy a faithful one? Isn’t it the copy’s claim to truth that we compare? Far then from producing a critique of representation, Heidegger’s comparison of different modes of thought would seem to fall down mimesis’s slippery slope. He too succumbs to its power. What is the truth? There is no truth, honey. Only simulacra. Paul Valentin shows that the question we need to ask is how does this simulacra work.
For full effect, please read in the voice of Tom Cruise’s character in Magnolia (1999). If you haven’t seen the movie, watch it now.
Online discussion with Elke Dreier and Arjen Kleinherenbrink
28.05.2021
As part of the series Thinking Nature, GiG Munich hosted the online discussion between Elke Dreier (currently showing her work Betrachtungen des Waldes at GiG) and Dr. Arjen Kleinherenbrink (assistant professor in metaphysics and philosophical anthropology at the Faculty of Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies at the Radboud University Nijmegen, Netherlands) . The zoom discussion took place on the 28th of May.
The image in Elke Dreier’s work is the forest clearing – Arjen Kleinherenbrink will be introducing Deleuze and Guattari’s idea of the plane of nature. In this way, we will move from clearing to plane, to see how things might reveal themselves to us and how things came about to be what they are.
Elke Dreier, Betrachtungen des Waldes, 2021, video installation (still image)
Elke Dreier, Betrachtungen des Waldes, 2021, video installation (still image)
Elke Dreier, Betrachtungen des Waldes, 2021, video installation (still image)
Elke Dreier, Betrachtungen des Waldes, 2021, video installation (still image)
Elke Dreier, Betrachtungen des Waldes, 2021, video installation (still image)
Elke Dreier, Betrachtungen des Waldes, 2021, video installation (still image)
Camera: Daniel Asadi FasziXylothek, TUM Holzforschung München
Elke Dreier, Betrachtungen des Waldes, 2021, video installation (still image)
Elke Dreier, Betrachtungen des Waldes, 2021, video installation (installation view)
Elke Dreier, Betrachtungen des Waldes, 2021, video installation (installation view)
Elke Dreier, Betrachtungen des Waldes, 2021, video installation (installation view)
Elke Dreier, Betrachtungen des Waldes, 2021, video installation (installation view)
The clearing in the forest is such a compelling image. It always seems to happen quite suddenly. The trees fall away to reveal an empty space. The sun shines there. Birds sing. A butterfly flutters by. Things become visible in the clearing as the eye adjusts to the bright light. We begin to perceive things that were previously hidden — things that otherwise might have escaped our notice. When we enter the clearing things show themselves to us. But what are these things that we see? And who are the ‘we’ to who see them?
For me, the clearing always will belong to Heidegger. When in ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’ he starts to describe the relation between truth and unconcealment, it is the clearing to which he turns. He writes here so memorably,
In the midst of being as a whole an open place occurs. There is a clearing. Thought of in reference to beings, this being is more in being than are beings. Thos open center is therefore not surrounded by beings; rather, the clearing center itself encircles all that is, as does the nothing, which we scarcely know. (‘Origin of the Work of Art,’ in Heidegger, Basic Writings, 114)
Heidegger makes good use of the way the clearing makes the forest visible to us, the moment when we finally see the space, light, and air, that despite always being present, within the forest remaining unnoticed, overlooked. For Heidegger, the clearing then becomes the metaphor for how beings stand in Being.
But there are so many other approaches to the clearing, and it is this that the work of Elke Dreier shows so well: the clearing in its compelling-ness. We might look at the video footage of the local forest and see the light, the trees and the leaves. Those who are more observant might catch a glimpse of an insect or bird. An expert bird imitator however, would know the names of all the birds he hears and be able to replicate their song exactly. Similarly, the staff at Munich’s Xylotheque could identify the wood structures of each of the trees found there. The clearing is thus open to all those who wish to enter. It invites us in.
The clearing as presented by Elke Dreier in Betrachtungen des Waldes is the first in a series of exhibitions (entitled, Thinking Nature) held at GiG Munich. These exhibitions hope to examine man’s relation to nature, or more accurately, how man’s thinking is structured through the relation he has with nature. For too long this kind of thinking had been focused on the relationship man establishes with nature. Traditionally, the condition of knowledge lies within the human subject and whatever his experience of the world might be. More recently Marxist, feminist, and postmodern thought have set to critique this relationship further. I would argue the challenge is to think nature outside this relation, with our current climate crisis as well as the ongoing corona pandemic making this task all the more urgent. The clearing of Elke Dreier work is to provide the open space for discussion.
Black Prince, 2019, Acrylic and oil on linen, 45 x 55 cm
Sugar Almond, 2019, Acrylic and oil on linen, 45 x 55 cm
Beehive Ginger, 2019, Acrylic and oil on linen, 45 x 55 cm
Silver Dollar, 2019, Acrylic and oil on linen, 45 x 55 cm
Silver Dollar, 2019, Acrylic and oil on linen, 45 x 55 cm
Apollo’s Gift I, 2018, Acrylic and oil on linen, 45 x 55 cm
False Unicorn Root, 2019, Acrylic and oil on linen, 45 x 55 cm
Rainbow Moonstone, 2019, Acrylic and oil on linen, 45 x 55 cm
Compared with the large scale installations of paintings, objects and video she has shown previously, the show Jane Hayes-Greenwood presents at GiG seems, at first glance, quite straightforward. It consists of thirteen small oil paintings, all on identically sized linen canvases, each depicting one flower or plant. Some of these plants – like for instance, One O’Clock Gun – look vaguely familiar, something you might come across in a garden or meadow, others are startlingly strange, unnatural composites of tubular forms, bulbs, prickles and flesh.Although many of the plants are green, the colours are unlike those found in nature, a mixture of viridian, mint, pale blue, grey and black. The plants are rooted in the soil, but this is pale yellow or pink – they are clearly defined, casting strong theatrical shadows, yet equally clearly, they are not from this world. They are all slightly larger than life.
Speaking to Jane, we learn that the work stems from her earlier research into the origin of the ❤️ symbol. It is thought that this shape is based on the seeds of a mythical plant, the Silphium, known in Roman times for its contraceptive and aphrodisiacal properties.A possible recreation of how Silphium might have looked appears in Apollo’s Gift and Apollo’s Gift II. The other plants of the collection have been similarly selected for their histories, their medicinal properties or even, as with One O’Clock Gun, for their unusual name.Together they form a ‘Witch’s Garden,’ and it seems very deliberate to be showing them in Bavaria, a state infamous for one of the largest witch trials of the 17th century.
But just as a fast motion film of a plant germinating and growing does not bring us any closer to the actual seedling, knowing more about Jane’s research practice is not what brings us close to the work.As Heidegger argues in his short essay ‘The Thing,’ the abolition of distance brings no nearness, indeed often when distance is abolished, the nearness of the thing remains absent. Nearness cannot be encountered directly, instead, it can only be reached by attending to what is near.And what is near according to Heidegger, are things, standing on their own, self-supporting and independent. Things are not objects, neither re-presented in perception, thought through their making process nor through the function they fulfil. They cannot be defined for us, precisely, by scientific method.We have to learn the activities of things through what they do, because things are foremost an activity that involves other things and non-things – the world.
Since I have known Jane, she has always been interested in things, whether these are the mysterious artefacts of her earlier drawings, the fetishistic partial objects of her paintings, or in this case, the plant forms contained by her canvases. Whether or not these plants are supposed to be life-like or make-believe, they gather together tales of the divine and the problems of being human, what relates to the infinite, and what is defined as perishable. Quite literally they stem forth to join earth and sky. They encourage us not to think the earth and sky separately in order to define and understand them but together, at once, intertwined.
All things have a strangeness to them for those who care to look. Their foreignness has been long recognised, whether this takes the form of the thing-in-itself, never to be experienced or trauma, first defined as that which acts like a foreign body in the mind.We notice the strangeness of objects for instance, when blunt or broken they stop being useful and they turn away from us and each other.Justina Becker pays close attention to things in their strangeness. The objects she incorporates in her practice are always things that she finds close by, in her house or in the small town where she lives, and almost always, these things have been abandoned, damaged in some regard, without a use. The objects have a history to them – even the viewer not privileged enough to know more of their background, the wheres and hows they came about, can recognise the signs of their previous use. They retain a sense of having lived their own life, among other people and other objects.
Having studied painting to graduate with Klasse Hildebrand,Justina Becker approaches her objects with the eye of a painter. Her older work was concerned with the material qualities of painting. How the canvas goes around the stretcher would be important or the way that the canvas keys fit tightly into the corner of a frame.A shift in her practice occurred when she discovered the readymade and began to use things that previously belonged to someone else. Initially she would wrap these objects in various ways. Some would be covered in a layer of light, sheer fabric almost like a shroud, others would be tightly wound with brightly coloured woollen thread. This protective gesture had a double meaning. On the one hand, it would be a way of hiding the object, obscuring its material qualities and past histories. On the other hand, the object would never be completely covered and through the various gaps and imperfections, its material history would become even more apparent.
The current exhibition at GiG, shows two of Justina Becker’s older paintings together with a new body of work. One seems at first a straightforwardly abstract, but gives the illusion of a painting shrunk and stretched, the other, consisting of strips of canvas wrapped tightly like a bandage around a stretcher, utilises this double gesture of hiding and revealing. They provide a kind of framework for the new work, a complex installation of hanging window frames, made specifically for the exhibition room at GiG. The wooden windows frames are old, perhaps antique, but with none of the antique’s preciousness. They have been removed and replaced with something better and less rickety, glass taken out, the wood still having some kind of value, even if just as kindling for the fire. These frames have been partially painted by the artist in sympathetic colours and rehanged in the space no longer as windows, or even as architectural elements that would divide the room, but simply for themselves, in their best light. Justina Becker’s work takes on here an almost theatrical element, but the stage she sets is curiously not for us, the viewer, awaiting some kind of grand spectacle. The room in its theatricality is now left for the objects to be in.
Justina Becker, 2019, installation view
Justina Becker, 2019, installation view
Justina Becker, untitled, 2019, antique wooden windowframe and egg tempera, dimensions variable
Justina Becker, 2019, installation view
Justina Becker, 2019, installation view
Justina Becker, 2019, installation view
Justina Becker, 2019, installation view
Justina Becker, 2019, installation view
Justina Becker, o.T., 2015, egg tempera and canvas strips, 20 x 32 cm
Justina Becker, o.T., 2015, egg tempera on canvas, 20 x 32 cm
Justina Becker, o. T., 2015, egg tempera on canvas,
Justina Becker, 2019, installation view
Justina Becker, 2019, installation view (nighttime)
Justina Becker, 2019, installation view (nighttime)
Justina Becker, 2019, installation view (nighttime)
GiG 