History: A microcosmic perspective Anselm Kiefer and Oliver Beer featured at 20/21 espacio de arte, Tijarafe, La Palma
The group show History: A microcosmic perspective is exhibited alongside a permanent installation entitled Anselm Kiefer - Making Sense of the Senseless. The former explores the role played by art in humanising historical events. The history of an individual is as much about cultural legacy as it is about recent family heritage, and viewing art from this perspective shines a light on our differences on both the global and the personal scale. That we are all in fact unique is what we actually all have in common, and understanding this enables us to see ourselves in the ‘other’ and develop the empathy that is necessary to build a humane and peaceful world.
Oliver Beer's Household Gods reflects the artist's exploration of the relationship between sound and form, and the innate musicality of the physical world. The Household Gods (Father) are physical objects (once belonging to or have a connection to his father), placed on plinths in a whitened room and idolised to the point where they can sing. They are given a voice and raised to the status of household divinities. Beer uses microphones to amplify the ambient sound ricocheting within the internal spaces of the objects, creating gentle acoustic feedback loops, that allow us to hear the innate sound of each object. These notes are determined by volume and form of empty space, and have remained unchanged since the day each piece was created.
Anselm Kiefer - Making Sense of the Senseless investigates notions of legacy in the German artist's work. Since the beginning of his career, Kiefer has faced a post-Holocaust heritage head-on. In his search for understanding the atrocities committed before him, he has intensely studied mythologies, folklore, philosophy and alchemy, attempting to find a coherent view of a world that makes no sense in more conventional thought. These investigations have become the foundations of his paintings, sculptures and installations, from which results a body of work that speaks as much about a personal history as it does of all humanity. These are narratives to keep memories alive, and these are memories to ensure the hard life lessons are not lost.
In Kiefer's words, 'For me, art is the only possibility to establish a connection between things that make no sense and those that have a meaning. I see history as something synchronized, both if it refers to the Sumerians or to German mythology. As far as I am concerned, old sagas are not old at all. Neither is the Bible. When you look into it, the majority of things have already been formulated.'
