Tree Connections 11.05
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An Art and Exhibition Project by Klaus Littmann TREE CONNECTIONS from Christian Friedrich Gille to Christo 11.05. – 11.07.2021 LIST OF DISPLAYED WORKS VITO ACCONCI ANONYMOUS ANONYMOUS (1940–2017) China, 17th century (Ming & Qing dynasty) In the following all descriptions are listed chronologically in alphabetical Model for War Memorial in the Middle Komposition mit morschem Tree root sculpture for meditation order following the surnames of the of the Trees, 1984 Baumstamm, around 1820 made from different parts, H: 60 cm exhibiting artists. Mixed media, Plexiglas, wooden box, Oil on paper, 34.5 × 27.2 cm 43 × 116 × 119 cm The material astonishes with its multiple Texts on the exhibits: The small format is the key here. Views levels of reality. There is root wood at Regine Bungartz and Isabel Zürcher “It’ll grow over in time,” or “Let’s just wait from above and below converge so the base, looking as though churned by for the dust to settle.” These sayings, closely that our own point of view begins stormy seas, riddled with unpredictable © 2021 KBH.G often reeled off in passing, imply that a to waver. Here is a tree revealing its whorls and shadowy hollows. A bough catastrophe has gone before. Getting innermost secrets while—like a morbidly marked by notches rises from it like over it will take some time and depend evocative eruption—it shoots up into antlers, obstinately pushing upward in its on the reliability of natural cycles. In the the sky. Its consistency seems mossy, urge to grow. In the dynamic interaction face of war and annihilation, plants are with thin shoots disappearing into the of the two elements we see a windswept bearers of hope. Eucalyptus trees grow blue ground, hopelessly trying to tether tree standing on an exposed crag: Who quickly and their leaves form a canopy the overpowering creature. The soft is holding whom, what has this wood that is at once dense and airy, while greens and browns, mottled and porous, witnessed in its long life and how old their slender, branchless trunks enable are reminiscent of a painter’s palette, will it still become? them to be planted in closely packed inter mixing flatly with streaks of impasto rows. Vito Acconci’s War Memorial paint. Such primeval power from an nonetheless leaves room for architec- anonymous hand heralded the art of tural elements to be placed around the Surrealism in the nineteenth century. roots. Seating conforming to the order Max Ernst would later call his pictorial of the forest provides a shady oasis for fantasies intermingling massed roots, commemorating the countless unknown masks, and monsters “swamp angels.” departed. ANONYMOUS HANS ARP PI-RO AUTENHEIMER STEPHAN BALKENHOL JOSEPH BEUYS (Mali, 10th–15th century) (1886–1966) (1933–1997) (* 1957) (1921–1986) Small door, ironwood, 35 × 23 cm Figure-Fleur-Chute, 1951 Untitled, 1962 Katzenfrau (Cat Woman) 4, 2004 von hier aus 7000 Eichen monumental sculpture at the Academy Relief, 27 × 21 × 4 cm Wood, metal (chainmail), Wawa wood, colored, 172 × 39.5 × 30 cm (Mitwirken durch eine Baumspende) in Düsseldorf. Beuys responded to the It is difficult to discern how human and 22 × 38.5 × 25 cm 1982 “forest of sculptures” he re-called from animal relate to one another here, but Constellation ‘Amphore’, 1955 Complete with pedestal, the nude statue Poster, offset, signed the days of the Nazi regime with the they both emerge from the same wood. Relief, 31 × 21 × 4 cm We are asked to accept the boards as is life-sized—a stylite that looks almost aspiration to set social processes in Whoever it was that released them so they are: too short, too long, sometimes dainty, in a tranquil pose. Splinters and On March 16, 1982, Joseph Beuys motion through art. This idea was new at straightforwardly from the grain, it is Working in relief—not quite sculpture riddled with nails. Pi-Ro Autenheimer furrows in her surface keep her at a planted on the edge of Friedrichsplatz in the time, as were Beuys’s art “actions,” clear that carrier and sign, ground and and not quite picture—Hans Arp tried for offers found objects as a sculptural col- distance, bearing witness to the artist’s front of the Museum Fridericianum and proved highly attractive to students figures are one. The old door from Mali decades to strike different balances: lage, undramatic and rapidly assembled. manual labor. Balkenhol carves and the first tree for his action 7000 Oaks. in particular. Resistance is not futile reveals once more the fascination felt between presence and absence, here Horse and rider exhibit a crude whimsy hews each of his figures from a stake and no institutional rule is sacrosanct. by many modernist European artists and there, shadow and light. In his that would be hard to top. Harking of African Wawa wood. They display the Joseph Beuys and Bernhard J. Blume, 7000 Oaks was what Beuys called his for artifacts from far-off continents and hands, even solid wood gives the impres- back to the portentous tradition of the characteristic traces of his work openly, Kontakt mit Bäumen, 1982 Print on contribution to the 1982 documenta in cultures. Paul Klee comes to mind with sion that the forms could shift again at equestrian statue, they are the diamet- even flagrantly. A human body with paper, signed by Beuys and Blume Kassel, with the subtitle “City Forestation his reduced figures—coming together any moment. It’s all very simple. And rical opposite of bricolage: Astride his a cat’s head would normally strain the Instead of City Administration.” Seeing and diverging again in their loose everything is in motion, dream figures magnificent steed, the proud command- imagination, but the soft wood fuses 7000 Eichen, documenta VII, 1982 more and more high-priced status sym- distribution across the picture plane. and metamorphoses on a wooden game er was for centuries the embodiment of them in peaceful coexistence. A long Black-and-white offset, graphite bols circulating in the art market, Beuys Witnesses to bygone days seem to have board. A vegetable form or the outline state and military power. All that remains cultural history demonstrates how con- signature, 14.7 × 10.5 cm planted tree after tree in Kassel—not been excavated out of this wooden of a human body? Top and bottom seem here of such omnipotence is a frail ducive this organic material is to convey- for sale and with the participation of a panel, the tool marks intermingling with interchangeable; for Arp, amphorae are skeleton, like a rickety chair that would ing a vision, releasing never-before-seen Rettet den Wald, 1972 public that is likewise far removed the fibers of the material. Depending related to female forms. Every element is not even support the weight of a child. beings from its core. flowing, other times Offset on paper, signed and numbered, from art. on the fall of light, the figures look as animated and personified; positive and As a throw-away relic of the comman- geometric edges, or was it chance and 41 × 29.3 cm though engraved while begging us to be negative are interdependent, either tec- der’s armor, the chainmail likewise the magic of their inventors? remembered: We engrave in our memo- tonically like a blueprint for architecture, undermines any gesture of menace, its “Save the forest!”: This 1972 appeal ries things that should be preserved and or perhaps like the contour of a sand- rattling long since silenced by rust. has lost none of its relevance. Armed not lost. bank spared by the waves. Has the wood with brushwood brooms, the group sets grain inspired the sometimes flowing, off, Joseph Beuys (with hat) in the lead, other times geometric edges, or was it a visual artist, founding member chance and the magic of their inventors? of the Greens Party, and professor of FRANZ BURKHARDT MIRIAM CAHN ALEXANDRE CALAME CHRISTO (* 1966) (* 1949) (1810–1864) (1935–2020) Rue Chateau de Graaf, 2020 quickly by a masterful hand, overlooks a Untitled, 1989 Fallen Tree – Struck by Lightning, Wrapped Trees appearance, had the effect of revealing Pencil and ink on paper, section of the wayside. The artist zooms Charcoal on paper, 58.5 × 58.5 cm ca. 1840 Project for the Fondation Beyeler, for the firsttime the sculptural power of 26 × 20.7 cm back here to the nineteenth century, Oil on paper on canvas, 29.4 × 51 cm Riehen, Switzerland, 1997 their crowns. Transforming the Champs- evoking images of longing. Or does this Drawing is touch, the hand coming Pencil, charcoal, pastel, wax crayon, and Elysées into an avenue of surreal-looking Böschwey, 2021 leafless growth instead capture a scene into contact with charcoal and paper. Tronc d’hètre, c. 1849 fabric sample, 106.6 × 244 cm fabric creatures has so far remained a Pencil and ink on paper, of the impenetrably dense present? Traces of the working process are part Oil on cardboard, 45.5 × 33 cm utopian dream—a symbolic act of protec- 40.5 × 28.3 cm of the motif. Unadorned and for that Wrapped Trees tion for the city’s trees. all the more striking, a lone small tree The almost tender precision in the Project for the Avenue des Champs- Container 2 Kubik, 2020–2021 juts willfully into the field of paper. The rendering of foliage, trunk, and moss Elysées, 1987 Mixed media, plywood, Styrodur, branching packs emotional power. Firmly fails to distract from the drama. The Color lithograph with collage of Styrofoam, paint, anchored in soft charcoal black, short trunk lies rent open, its insides erupt- transparent polyethylene, thread, staples, 12 × 200 × 210 cm lines fan out straight to form the figure.