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270812: Sammlung Goetz Pawel Althamer
Sammlung Goetz
Pawel Althamer
29.05.2012 – 06.10.2012
Only for a visit
By Stephan Maier
At the opening, members of Pawel Althamer’s “Task Force” stepped out of the fancifully designed “Magical Mystery Tour” bus in their golden astronaut overalls and immediately mingled with the other guests. Althamer’s “community” - accompanying him to every exhibition and made up of his friends, neighbours and relatives - didn’t do much, but, more important, the group didn’t leave the unpleasant impression of wanting to stimulate the others – and that’s a good thing.
This allowed for an undisrupted impression of the Polish artist’s oeuvre of the Goetz Collection. Too often did the group dynamic efforts by Althamer, who always attempts to overcome the hopelessly out-dated understanding of art, overshadow his actual work. No matter if he organized an “Illustrator Conference” like the one at this year’s Berlin Biennial or if he initiated projects with prisoners or youths: it always had to do with the participation of social outsiders and the “spiritual journey” of the author.
The magic-psychedelic character of his works are evident in their calling for attention to the conditions of the aggregates of human character on the quasi religious quest of itself, the other, and the rest. The self-portrait of a wormlike embryo with a head resembling that of a surreal shrunken adult'sis touching. The totemic terracotta statue of his wife, big with child, created as a double portrait of mother and son, is brilliant. And the collective effort with Polish students culminates in a realistic sculpture of a homeless person, who seems to contemplate about the one-way paths of life.
The show is dominated by the dimension and complexity of the completely aloof group of figures of the “Bródno People” that Althamer realized with neighbours from the Brodno prefab building estate in Warsaw. Almost incidentally Rodin’s “Citizens of Calais” and its epitome of civil solidarity seem to be catapulted into an apparent unreal present and counter-world. On the moveable constructions the futuristic parade of fools including figures such as Teletubby and Cyborg, astronaut and alien, pass the onlooker at a distance like a group of visitors. A figure resembling Picasso’s “Woman with the baby carriage” encounters the chaotically arranged bulk trash-chic of Eastern European everyday life.
On the other hand, the image of the young mother pushing a stroller in the everyday ghetto-life of East and West is an extremely familiar one. In this context, members of marginalized groups such as Südtirolerplatz-Günther (exhibition in the Secession) would have been too otherworldly-alien: in Munich, even the sellers of the street papers are inconspicuous, but conspicuously neatly dressed.
Sammlung Goetz
8192 Munich, Oberföhringer Strasse 103
http://www.sammlung-goetz.de
Mehr Texte von translated and summarized by: Liz Wollner-Grandville
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270812
Sammlung Goetz
81925 München, Oberföhringer Straße 103
Tel: +49 89 9593969-0, Fax: +49 89 9593969-69
Email: info@sammlung-goetz.de
http://www.sammlung-goetz.de
Öffnungszeiten: Do,Fr 14-18, Sa 11-16
Sammlung Goetz
81925 München, Oberföhringer Straße 103
Tel: +49 89 9593969-0, Fax: +49 89 9593969-69
Email: info@sammlung-goetz.de
http://www.sammlung-goetz.de
Öffnungszeiten: Do,Fr 14-18, Sa 11-16
