Sugimoto meets Holbein in Frankfurt's Städel
In an illuminating juxtaposition with Hans Holbein's masterpiece paintings,
Hiroshi Sugimoto's portraits of Henry VIII and his wives, created on
commission by the Deutsche Guggenheim, can be seen on loan by Deutsche
Bank Art through May 23 in Frankfurt's Städel.
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Hiroshi Sugimoto:
Heinrich VIII,
1999
Deutsche Bank Collection
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Hiroshi Sugimoto:
Jane Seymour,
1999
Deutsche Bank Collection
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The larger-than-life black and white photographs of the wax
figures of
Henry VIII and his six wives seem disturbingly real as they confront
the visitor in the rotunda of Frankfurt's
Städel. The photographs of these famous historical personalities,
which the Japanese artist
Hiroshi Sugimoto has staged in careful arrangements before a dramatically
lit black background in Madame
Tussaud's Wax Museum in London, demonstrate the gap between
photographed and experienced reality with nearly hallucinogenic precision.
On the occasion of the Holbein
exhibition Der Bürgermeister, der Maler und seine Familie (
The Mayor, the Painter, and His Family), which can be seen through May
23 in Frankfurt's Städel, Sugimoto trifft Holbein (
Sugimoto meets Holbein) provides a unique chance to see Sugimoto's
works from his Portraits
series in close proximity to the painted originals of
Hans Holbein the younger. The comparison is both stimulating and
disturbing: Sugimoto's black and white photographs come across as
contemporary copies of old master portraits and derive their aesthetic
appeal from a two-fold media refraction: the transferal of the
two-dimensional representation of the 16th century paintings into plastic
form and the real material of the wax copies, and from there back into
two-dimensional photography. The almost surreal presence and entrancement
of Sugimoto's photographic works remove them from their original context
and call for a meditation on time, history, and memory.
In the
juxtaposition of contemporary art photography with the art of the perhaps
most photographic of all great German masters, the presentation of
Sugimoto's works can also be understood as a programmatic prelude and
connecting link to this spring's upcoming photography exhibitions at the
Städel: visitors to the museum can already look forward to the works of
August Sander and
Charles Sheeler.
Hiroshi Sugimoto: Anne Boleyn, 1999
Deutsche Bank Collection
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Parastou Forouhar in the exhibition "Entfernte Nähe"
The artist Parastou
Forouhar, who was born in Iran, has been fighting for years to shed
light on the circumstances surrounding her
parents' murders. Her drawings, which are part of the
Deutsche Bank Collection, portray the everyday terror of the
mullah bureaucracy. Now, Forouhar's work can be seen in the oppressive
installation Werkreihe Bemusterung / Work Series
Patterned in the exhibition
Entfernte Nähe / Far Near Distance at the
Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin.
Parastou Forouhar: Untitled, from the series "Take off your shoes",
2001/2002 ©Deutsche Bank Collection
The
Iranian-born artist Parastou Forouhar has been living in exile in Germany
since 1991. Following her studies at the art school in Teheran, she came
to Offenbach in 1990 to refine her understanding of graphics and design.
Iran's history, however, pursued her, ultimately leading to tragedy: on
November 22, she received the news that her parents, the regime-critical
politicians Darjush Forouhar and
Parvaneh Eskanderi, had been murdered in their apartment; a serious effort
to find their killers never occurred.
From this moment on, it became
clear to Parastou Forouhar that she had to use her art to fight against
injustice, terror, and more than anything else the silence in Iran. She
has been trying to shed light on the circumstances of the crime committed
against her parents ever since. She traveled to Teheran again and again to
speak with officials and request an investigation - in vain. What remains
is an endless written correspondence with the mullahs responsible,
including numerous drawings in which Forouhar depicts the harassment of
everyday Iranian bureaucracy. Thus, her series Schuhe ausziehen (
Take off your shoes), which was made between 2001 and 2002 and
acquired by the Deutsche Bank Collection, serves to come to terms with
both memory and personal grief.
Parastou Forouhar: Nr.1, from the serie "Gabel,
Werkreihe Eslimi", 2003 ©Parastou Forouhar
Even while Forouhar continually attacks the political intrigues in Iran, she
still seeks the formal language for her artistic work in the present-day
culture of her home country. This was why the curator
Rose Issa invited her to take part in the exhibition of contemporary
Iranian artists with the paradigmatic title Entfernte Nähe.
The result is her installation Werkreihe Bemusterung, built inside
an extra container, a garage-sized corrugated tin box furnished with
preciously decorated pillows. It's only when they're seen up close that
the pattern reveals itself to be a web of knives end to end, and the
terror of a totalitarian regime emerges beneath the surface of thin
fabric. The visitor becomes immediately drawn into this tension between
refined form and violent symbol. This synthesis of the elements of design
and architecture in Forouhar's work makes the gap in the restrictive
Iranian social order palpable - quietly surrounded by a prison in which
the visual norm dominates.
The installation Werkreihe
Bemusterung by Parastou Forouhar can be seen through May 9 in the
exhibition Entfernte Nähe in the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin.
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