HEAD was published in
Nature Morte, Contemporary Artist's reinvigorate the
Still-Life Tradition
by Michael Petry. Published in English by Thames & Hudson and in
German by Hirmer.
HEAD was also part of the two-year
travelling exhibition Nature Morte that went to Finland,
Sweden, Poland and England.
Having a body – or being a body?
Reminiscent of precariously balanced human pyramids, the
structures that the images show remind on monstrances or reliquary
shrines. (latin: 'monstrare' = to show) - objects that are made to
preserve and display real and symbolic body parts, which are
believed to bridge an access to the world beyond our physical
world (which I consider as a type of 'mythological indexicality',
to use this term from the theory of photography here). Such
shrines are therefore highly symbolised respresentations of the
body.
The images are digital photomontages. The gradient background is a
reference to museum catalogue photography of artefacts. The body
parts that build the shrines are repurposed photography found
within the contemporary flood of internet material of nudity and
pornography. The works therefore combine two forms of
representation of the body that are usually seen to belong to
diametrical opposite spheres of cultural space:
Pornography - being considered trash, dirty, sexual, exploitative,
public - but consumed in private, ubiquitously available at any
device with internet connection - in fact powering the internet
but still staying 'invisible', 'fast' photography (nobody would
ever credit the photographer), not 'art', showing 'raw' bodies.
Reliquary shrines and monstrances - being considered high culture,
artistic achievement, valuable, religious, more often seen in
museums than in churches resulting in a cultural esteem that
leaves their original purpose out of sight.
This uneasy combination here results in artfully balanced
shrine-like structures that are made from 'trash', yet represent a
somewhat absurd spiritual imagery of wholeness, whose building
stones are corporeal fragments shown in a moment of an unsteady
balance - that may collapse at any time.
The large 70 cm x 100 cm exhibition prints are made using a
slightly 'metallic' C-type paper (similar to Cibachrome prints)
which are face-mounted on glass. The resulting objects have the
appearance of sheets of sumptously coloured glass.
I reworked these images many times since first starting to make
them around 2003. The last modifications happened in 2012.
Klaus Wehner, Berlin, 2021