Anselm Reyle. Foto: Jason Schmidt. Courtesy of the artist
|
Anselm Reyle, Untitled, 2012. © Anselm Reyle
|
Anselm Reyle, Untitled, 2005. Deutsche Bank Collection
|
Anselm Reyle, Untitled, 2012.© Anselm Reyle GmbH
|
Anselm Reyle, Untitled, 2008. Exhibition view, MYSTIC SILVER, Deichtorhallen Hamburg, Photo: Henning Rogge / Deichtorhallen
|
Anselm Reyle, Untitled, 2012. © Anselm Reyle
|
Anselm Reyle: Untitled, 2012. Eternity, 2002 (from left). Exhibition view, MYSTIC SILVER, Deichtorhallen Hamburg. Photo: Henning Rogge / Deichtorhallen Hamburg
|
Anselm Reyle, Untitled, 2011. © Anselm Reyle
|
Anselm Reyle, Untitled, 2005. © Anselm Reyle
|
Anselm Reyle, Untitled, 2009. © Anselm Reyle
|
Heuwagen, 2001/2008.© Anselm Reyle
|
Anselm Reyle: Werningerode, 2002. Exhibition view, MYSTIC SILVER, Deichtorhallen Hamburg. Photo: Henning Rogge / Deichtorhallen Hamburg
|
Anselm Reyle, Mystic Silver, 2008. © Anselm Reyle
|
Anselm Reyle, Untitled, 2012.© Anselm Reyle
|
|
|
Chaos and mountains of garbage are familiar components of contemporary art. But the heaps of trash in Hamburg’s Deichtorhallen
look strangely raw and unfinished. Mutilated canvases, cables, neon
tubes, wood residue and all kinds of metals are accustomed elements in
the work of Anselm Reyle.
However, he normally arranges these materials down to the last detail
and seals their surfaces until they shine. Thus, there is a reason why
the Berliner has the reputation of being a perfectionist art technocrat
who leaves nothing to chance and runs his Treptow studio operations in
the style of a medium-sized Swabian toolmaker’s shop. Did he intend to
produce new works quickly right at the location? Or did he discard
existing ones? What exactly is going on here? Reyle sheds light on the
situation. Since studio trash has “an energy all its own,” he brought a
truckload of it to Hamburg to spice up the beginning of the exhibition
tour. A rust-infested, once-blue ticket booth from the long-closed East
Berlin Spreepark
amusement park rounds out the reception. Reyle (who was born in
Tübingen in 1970) is satisfied with the result. It is a loosening up
exercise for the painter and sculptor’s biggest solo exhibition to date. The Deutsche Bank Collection contains abstract works by the artist.
You feel right at home at the show, which is entitled Mystic Silver
and chiefly consists of works executed in the last five years, because
the exhibits have been featured in countless magazines and catalogs:
the foil paintings in their acrylic-glass Snow White coffins, the
stripe paintings with their frivolous superficiality, the massive
chrome-sealed sculptures reminiscent of Koons, rainbow-colored fake debris, painting-by-numbers, the fluorescent hay wagon from the Boros bunker
– everywhere there is glitter paint, mirrors, and neon colors. A bright
signal yellow color sluice is enthroned in the middle of the room,
through which you move from daylight to black light.
The artist relates that when he was studying in Karlsruhe in the nineties his painting professor tried to dissuade him from using neon colors. But Reyle, who is now a teacher himself at
Hamburg’s University of the Arts,
stuck with them. He loves the color temperatures close to the boiling
point, which make your eyes water. Taking all of this into account, it
becomes apparent that the artist has borrowed the cold core of his
world of color and shapes from industrial culture. And it is no
accident that his dark and shiny small sculptures look like space technology
debris that has fallen off of a Klingon starship.
The distinctive Reyle reference mix ranges from eighties punk art to an homage to the U.S. painter Bob Ross, the inventor and star of the 403-part TV painting course The Joy of Painting.
He also appropriates African crafts, the varnishing mania of autotuning
culture, and relief façade elements from GDR architecture. Due to the
boyish devotion with which Reyle pimps everyday objects and surfaces
for art, one might very well find the resulting aesthetic grounds
interesting, in keeping with the zeitgeist, or at the very least
amusing. But many critics do not. Instead, Reyle bashing has been
rampant for years. There is the American woman blogger who
denounces the artist, saying he makes “shallow, overproduced pieces,”
that
he produces “trophies for uninformed collectors who fancy themselves in
on the joke.” And then there is the critic writing for the Sunday
edition of
the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung who claims that Reyle only paints “Paul Smith
shirts and nails packing paper in picture frames.” Last year, an art
magazine adorned its cover with one of the artist’s endearing,
extremely bright-colored puppy motifs from his painting-by-numbers
series, but not without posing the suggestive question: “Kitsch or
art?” If you investigate the criticism of Reyle, you might learn more
about the distinction-obsessed critics than the artist himself.
Reyle
knows the game by now and reacts routinely. “If everyone likes it, then
I’ve done something wrong.” The kitsch argument particularly gets on
his nerves. “Political art as themed decoration can also be kitsch.”
That’s right. Still, it is hard to imagine seeing his paintings or
installations at a Berlin Biennale or a documenta.
They are a bit too glossy, too reminiscent of Miami. His art is a
little like a tanned sun studio beauty who is not invited to cool
intellectual parties.
Does he have to worry? No, because
although curators and critics are not very fond of Reyle’s art,
collectors adore it. And this affection is served productively. “I talk
openly about the market and don’t act like this is a faux-pas.” It’s
like this: The stronger the rejection from one corner, the more he is
embraced elsewhere, particularly by the design and fashion world. Hedi Slimane,
for example, is a declared fan of Reyle. The Frenchman once
photographed the artist’s studio in Kreuzberg as though he was taking a
picture in the kitchen of a futuristic alchemist. And the mischievous
artist/entrepreneur Rafael Horzon described Reyle’s studio in detail in his bestseller Das Weisse Buch
and thus erected a little memorial to him. Everyone wants to plumb the
secret of the artist’s success in his own way. The fondness for him
became almost oppressive last year, when Dior invited the artist to freshen up the luxury brand with camouflage patterns. The cooperation went splendidly, and in the end Dior nail paint was even sold in the Reyle pallet.
The Dior line was left out of the Hamburg show, as were the monstrous sofa objects the artist presented in his Berlin gallery CFA last year. But a separate room is devoted to the artist’s collaboration with the late Franz West.
For two-and-a-half years, unfinished objects went back and forth
between Reyle’s and his Austrian friend’s studios, which were worked on
by the respective other side. In the spring, shortly before West’s
death, the chair objects and collages were presented for the first time
in the Schinkel Pavilion
in Berlin. West encouraged Reyle to improvise, and the Berliner is
grateful to him. “It was liberating to get away from my own perfection
this way.” Thus, the exhibition in Deichtorhallen presents more than
what is already known about Reyle. On the one hand, Mystic Silver
is about how an artist has remained true to himself. On the other, the
exhibition shows that in the future his top priority might be to let
go, to say farewell to absolute control and meticulous perfection. For
it is precisely by embracing chaos that moments of beauty can be found.
ANSELM REYLE – MYSTIC SILVER
09.11.2012 – 27.01.2013
Deichtorhallen, Hamburg
|
