Creative Unrest:
The Latest Acquisitions at Deutsche
Bank
Evil flowers, provocative formats, reflections on a
globalized world: in 2005, the new acquisitions at Deutsche Bank once
again demonstrated a wide spectrum of artistic approaches to the medium
paper in all sizes and formats. Christiane Meixner introduces a
selection of the most recent highlights.
Guinea pigs do not
swim. Nor do moles or rabbits, for whom a dip into water constitutes a
sheer nightmare. The fact that they do this nonetheless in the works of Katja
Eckert in what looks like a drift through fluid matter has more to do
with technical skill than with reality. Eckert expands upon the facts of
everyday life to include views that are altogether possible – if only one
regarded them with the same peculiar sense of curiosity as the young
artist does.
Katja
Eckert: Hase from the series "Umwelt/Untitled", 2000, Deutsche Bank
Collection
Eckert's digitalized drawings on
photographic paper count among the most recent new acquisitions at
Deutsche Bank. Following an intensive meeting of the purchasing committee,
the firm has appropriated hundreds of new works of international origin
into its corporate collection, which is generally considered to be the
largest worldwide. International artists born between 1960 and 1975 have
once again profited from the fact that the bank has been concentrating
mainly on works on paper for the past quarter of a century; they have
investigated the medium in all its various facets.
Drawing has long
since ceased to restrict itself to a more or less abstract motif that is
then recorded on paper. The current discourse carries both into the
immediate art historical past and into concrete space, which can be
occupied and interpreted by means of tape, plywood, or other inexpensive
materials that are added as part of the piece. Markus
Amm works in this vein; his installations refer to historical
Constructivism as well as to design and current pop music – without,
however, allowing the viewer to fully comprehend these references to any
degree of satisfaction.
Markus
Amm: Nr. 9 from the series "Untitled", 2005,
Deutsche
Bank Collection
A trace of uneasiness
remains, as it does with the proliferating work Mistletoe 2 by Simon
Periton or Christoph
Schellberg's Fleurs du Mal, a drawing in ballpoint pen and
colored pencil on paper that has been drenched in coffee and on which
eyes, faces, and tiny skulls can be detected upon concentrated scrutiny.
Here, too, while the iconographic connection proceeds from the vanitas
symbol to the psychedelic drawings of the sixties, it does not lead to any
one exclusive interpretation of the motif.
Simon
Periton: Mistletoe 2, 2003,
Deutsche
Bank Collection,
Copyright Simon
Periton, Courtesy Sadie Coles HQ, London
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Christoph Schellberg: from the series
"Fleurs
du Mal", 2004,
Deutsche
Bank Collection
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Abounding in quotes, multiple layers of association, and
visible references to an aesthetic that investigates art's development
from the sixties to the eighties, these strategies appear to be seminal
for the generations represented here. Thomas
Werner counts among these, whose flowing female figures could easily
date from the seventies, but who on the other hand confronts the viewer in
contemporary manner with a provocatively oversized format.
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Thomas Werner: Girl (Pathosformel),
2005,
Deutsche Bank
Collection, Copyright: Galerie Bärbel Grässlin, Frankfurt a. M.
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Nina Bovasso
and Maria
Brunner also belong to this category. While Bovasso fills her
meter-sized paper surfaces with abstract bubbles, Brunner combines human
eyes, mouths, and bright red cherries to create brilliant ornamental
blow-ups. Yet what looks like a loud Easyfun-Ethereal
series by Jeff
Koons, whose work turns consumerism into fetish, the works of the
1962-born artist bear titles such as Of Faggy Flowers and Heavy Scents
. This doesn't really fit in with the pop cultural elements and undermines
their otherwise flawless impression.
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Nina Bovasso: Eyeballs, 2005,
Deutsche
Bank Collection
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Maria Brunner:
Von
schwulen Blumen und schweren Gerüchen, 2005,
Deutsche
Bank Collection
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Collage is also the theme of Werner
Büttner's c-prints, who already began working with similar means
as the Neue Wilde in painting two decades ago in response to the reduced
language of conceptual art prevailing at the time. Similarly to Martin
Kippenberger and Albert
Oehlen, with whom he co-founded the "League for Combating
Contradictory Behavior" in 1976, the artist always sought a certain
distance to his motifs. Since that time, Büttner's trademark has been an
ironic criticism of conventions of any type, even if the untitled drawings
depict seductively beautiful motifs such as a colorful snake in the grass
or a head from antiquity with a tube of paint held to its temple in pistol
form.
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