Wilkinson
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Lower Gallery
Silke Schatz:
St John For Augsburg
16 January-22 February 2009
German Artist Silke Schatz is showing a complex installation made up of various elements including video, sculpture, drawing and found objects. Together the individual components create a personal portrait of the city of Augsburg. Taking an investigative approach to the environment the artist explored the city through the eyes of architects and tour guides, absorbing its unique history and building up a photographic library of the geography, architecture and the traces of societal change within the landscape. The information garnered from these visits, inspired by both the romance and poetics of space and the formal indexes present within the architecture and monuments, reveal the city’s history.
This body of work was originally conceived to celebrate the 175th anniversary of Kunstverein Augsburg Gallery when five artists, Josef Dabernig, Rita McBride, Manfred Pernice, Gerold Tagwerker and Silke Schatz were selected to take part in an exhibition Aesthetic Complexes curated by Axel Jablonskii: A collection of sculptures inspired by the city of Augsburg which took place from 4 October-2 November 2008.
The installation is dominated by construction fences which contain and support the main body of work whilst forcing visitors to view the work from a distance. Large scale drawings backed with extravagant French walnut and cherry wood panelling are hung from the fences with simple cable binders, echoing advertisements and covers seen on construction sites throughout Augsburg as well as the architecture of the hall dating from 1607 for which the piece was first conceived. One wooden panel mimics the floor of the Schaezler Palais, the Bavarian picture-gallery in Augsburg, where a portrait of Jakob Fugger, The Rich (1459-1525) by Albrecht Dürer is hung. Fugger was of one of the richest families in the Renaissance era, and provided Charles V with the money needed to bribe the seven electors and to make him Holy Roman Emperor in 1519. Charles enabled them to have sovereign rights over their lands including the means to create their own currency. The drawing on the front of the wooden panel shows the Damenhof, 2008 (Ladies Yard) one of the four Yards of the Fuggerhouse in central Augsburg.
The front of the second wooden panel depicts a Barrack, the Luftabwehrkaserne, built in 1938 by the Nazis. Beneath the saddle roof is a hidden concrete structure, so strong it remains intact until today. After WWII Augsburg was a US garrison with over 30,000 soldiers and their families, the barracks remained in use by the American Army until 1998.
Today the site's reconstructed barracks and left over concrete structures have become new housing developments. These urban structures together with other Augsburg buildings and sculptures, often mirrored or inverted to reflect the complexity and aesthetics of the buildings (Aesthetic Complexes) can be seen in the slideshow as part of the installation. The carousel stands in the middle of the square space on a tree trunk, a reference to the columns of the Kunstverein Augsburg. The slides are projected onto a thin silver sprayed paper with a colourful ink drawing on the reverse. This reflective surface complements the metallic sheen of the fence.
St John for Augsburg, a small clay figurine is modelled on Johannes in Extase (1938), a sculpture representing the Crucifixion Group by Ewald Mataré 1887-1965. St John appears frequently in the bible; As well as being the witness to Jesus' death he is also the storyteller of Jesus' life. In the way that Matare's figure holds a strong presence in the city of Augsburg, Schatz is interested in the possibility of her own modest sculptural effigy of St John, with his head leant far back to hold presence within the installation as a whole, to contain and occupy the air around him.
Silke Schatz’s sculptures and drawings reflect her interest in architecture as both public and private space. A large portion of her work revolves around an investigative description of her home town of Celle, Germany. Borrowing her aesthetics from Neues Bauen architect Otto Haesler, who was working in Celle in the 1930s, these works combine the bold colours and futuristic design of that period, as well as their associations with civic progress and optimism. In pieces such as Mothership, Schatz’s concentric orb, suspended as a mobile, its varying layers suggesting a balanced microcosm or engineering model. Finished on the exterior with the buoyant shades of 20th century idealism, the calculated façade conceals layers of images and text belying its authoritarian construction.
Drawing parallels between the social function of architecture and its impact on individuals engaged with it, pieces such as Wurzelkind feature structural design as backdrop to Schatz’s own family biography. Her grandfather was an SS officer charged with war crimes; he committed suicide in the 1960s, leaving many questions unanswered. This piece features effigies of her grandparents, posed in front of a mural of Thears Gardenhouse, the officers’ barracks where they lived in 1942. The lamp was taken from this building, no longer in use. Schatz’s installation is homage and spectacle: a haunting stage play confronting horror, reconciliation, and discomfort of identity.
Schatz’s drawings merge this inbetweeness of imposed structure and intimate negotiation. Based on Haesler’s own sketches, Elephantenhaus and Celle, Siedlung Georgsgarten appear as both architectural blueprint and ephemeral fantasy. Altering the original subjects to reflect her own sense of invention, Schatz’s drawings illustrate concrete space as a malleable construct, both directing and being informed by the viewer’s own memories and experiences.
Silke Schatz has exhibited extensively in Europe, recent shows include Aesthetic Complexes, Kunstverien Augsburg. Radical Self/Wurzelkind, Bomann-Museum Celle and Beloved, le Plateau, FRAC, Paris. |
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Silke Schatz, St John for Augsburg, 2008, Installation, 200 x 750 x 750 cm
Silke Schatz, St John for Augsburg, 2008, Installation, 200 x 750 x 750 cm
Silke Schatz, Wurzelkind, 2006, Installation comprising: Lagerfeuer 1950s found lamp with eight coloured lightbulbs, 71 cm Diameter, approx 100 cm from floor; Figures: Martha und Erich Schatz, Clothing, Shoes, Wig, Wood, Cardboard, Photocopies on Fabric, Filling Material, Chains, Screws, Lamp, Wire 190 x 102 x 50 cm, (Figure of Erich Schatz 190 cm high, figure of Martha Schatz 170cm high), Drawing: Celle, Thaers Gartenhaus Leadpencil and Colorpencil on Paper 320 x 460 cm, 2 parts. |
