Anselm Kiefer For Velimir Khlebnikov

The State Hermitage Museum
2, Dvortsovaya Square
Saint Petersburg, Russia

The State Hermitage Museum inaugurates the first solo exhibition of Anselm Kiefer in Russia. Located in the Nicholas Hall of the Winter Palace, the exhibition is dedicated to the great Russian poet Velimir Khlebnikov.

For Kiefer, poetical production is often a starting point: “I think in pictures. Poems help me with this. They are like buoys in the sea. I swim to them, from one to the other. In between, without them, I am lost. They are the handholds where something masses together in the infinite expanse.”

One of Khlebnikov’s central ideas is that major pivotal naval and terrestrial battles endlessly repeat every 317 years. This foresight was for Kiefer a thread to reflect on themes of war and peace, the fugacity and finitude of all human aspirations and the mercilessness of fate. All the while, the exhibition “Anselm Kiefer, for Khlebnikov” is an ode to the sorrowful beauty of rusted vessels – these relics of wars once instilled fear and are now left at the uttermost points of the earth.

http://www.hermitagemuseum.org/wps/portal/hermitage/what-s-on/temp_exh/2017/kiefer/?lng=