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Image
courtesy of Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Zurich
JAVIER
TÉLLEZ
Rotations
January
21th to February 25th, 2012
Exhibition opening: January 20th, 6 – 8
pm
Galerie Peter Kilchmann is pleased
to present Rotations, a solo exhibition by
Javier Téllez. Born in Valencia, Venezuela,
in 1969, Javier Téllez currently resides in New York and
Berlin. For almost two decades now mental illness has been one
of the main subjects of Javier Téllez' practice as an artist.
Working often in collaboration with psychiatric patients, it
is the aim of Javier Téllez to produce films and videos that
attempt to challenge the stereotypes associated with mental
illness, and – as Michele Faguet stated in one text on Téllez'
work – to "engage in an ethical manner with communities of
individuals who live outside the models of normative behavior
that define the parameters of a ?sane' society but that are
constantly shifting in relation to the ideological structures
that determine this social order". Therefore, important
components of Téllez' projects are the specific social and
political histories of the locations where they are developed,
as can be seen with the two main pieces exhibited at the
gallery.
Rotations (Prometheus and Zwitter) (2011),
a new film installation produced after a year-long DAAD
residency in Berlin, focuses on the history of the psychiatric
institution and its relation to historical events of the 20th
century in the German context. The main protagonists of Téllez
' new films are two sculptures. One is Prometheus (1937) by
Arno Breker, a monumental male figure that represents the
mythological hero grasping a torch. The other figure is Weib
und Mann oder Adam und Eva, also known as “Zwitter” (1920) by
Karl Genzel, a small wooden figure depicting an hermaphrodite
that holds a clock in its hand. Rotations (Prometheus and
Zwitter) is an installation composed of two 35 mm silent
films projections, showing these sculptures rotating at the
same speed in different directions. The sculptures' endless
rotation is echoed in the installation by the film passing
through the projectors in a loop, referring to the cinematic
apparatus and its obsolescence as to the theme of repetition
and difference in history. The films show the morphological
similarities of the sculptures focusing in extreme details
that display their materiality, but it is through the very
disparity between the figures that meaning is articulated. The
confrontation between both sculptures further attests to a
shared history that is not revealed in the projected images
and goes back to two parallel exhibitions organized in Munich
by the National Socialists in 1937 – the infamous exhibition
"Entartete Kunst" and its counterpart, the "Grosse Deutsche
Kunstausstellung".
"Entartete Kunst", was an exhibition that toured
trough Germany and Austria after its premiere in 1937 and
consisted of modern art works that were chaotically displayed
next to labels designed to inflame the public opinion against
modern art, while promoting racial and political segregation.
Works belonging to the Expressionist, Cubist, Dadaist and Neue
Sachlichkeit movements were hung side by side in the
exhibition with pieces by psychiatric patients in order to
characterize the avant-garde artists as insane. A large number
of artworks made by the mentally ill, including Karl Genzel's
"Zwitter" were loaned for the exhibit from the Prinzhorn
Sammlung, an art collection focusing on works of psychiatric
patients and affiliated to the University of Heidelberg.
Reproductions of Genzel's work were also juxtaposed with
modern artworks in the pamphlet that advertised the “Entartete
Kunst” exhibition.
At
the same time that modern art was denigrated by the "Entartete
Kunst" exhibit, the Nazis promoted traditional paintings and
sculptures, exalting the values of racial purity, militarism
and obedience that characterized the Nazi ideology. Works that
illustrated those values were selected to be part of the
exhibition at the "Haus der Kunst", exemplifying a ?sane' art
imposed as normative, set against the works condemned as
?degenerated' art. Arno Breker’s bronze statue "Prometheus",
originally commissioned by Joseph Goebbels for the garden of
the Ministery of Propaganda was one of the centerpieces of the
“Grosse Deutsche Kunstausstellung”. Breker's sculpture
embodied in its heroic pathos the Aryan ideal that Hitler had
previously associated with this mythological figure in his
book "Mein Kampf".
The
two German sculptors brought together in Tellez' installation
have obvious dissimilar artistic careers. Arno Breker was a
protégé of Adolf Hitler and together with Leni Riefensthal and
Albert Speer one of the most influential artists in Germany
during the Nazi regime, while Karl Genzel was an outsider
artist, and a psychiatric patient of the asylum in Eickeborn,
diagnosed with schizophrenia. He was further one of the cases
that Hans Prinzhorn analyzed in his groundbreaking book
"Bildnerei der Geisteskranken (Artistry of the Mentally ill)"
published in 1922. Bringing the unequal figures of Arno Breker
and Karl Genzel together, Javier Téllez creates a
multi-layered work, which not only attests to the
instrumentalization of the Prinzhorn collection by the Nazi
regime, but also poses questions of inherent complexity on the
notions of normalcy and pathology that are still relevant
today.
Also
on view in the exhibition is the film O Rinoceronte de
Dürer (Dürer’s Rhinoceros) from 2010 in which Javier
Téllez investigates the architectural structure of the
panopticon. The film was shot entirely on location at the
panopticon of the Miguel Bombarda Hospital in Lisbon, a
psychiatric ward designed as a prison for the criminally
insane. Built In 1896 and following the original plans of
Jeremy Bentham, the panopticon accommodated 300 patients in
narrow single cells grouped around a central tower. The prison
was used until the year 2000 and has since become a museum.
The fragmentary narrative of O Rinoceronte de Dürer
(Dürer’s Rhinoceros) was conceived by the patients in a series
of workshops conducted by the artist prior to the shooting of
the film. The patients imagined themselves as inhabitants of
the former insane asylum and acted fictional scenarios inside
the cells. This reconstruction of the everyday life of the
mental institution is complemented in the film with
voice-overs quoting texts concerned with different
architectural models related to the overseeing power of the
gaze, like Jeremy Bentham's letter concerning the panoptic,
Plato's parable of the cave and Kafka's short story The
Burrow. This film was commissioned by the Calouste Gulbenkian
Foundation, Lisbon, in 2010.
Téllez exhibited at the 11 th Biennale de Lyon "Une
terrible beauté est née", curated by Victoria Noorthoorn in
2011. Recent single exhibitions include “Larger than Life” at
the Museu Calouste Gulbenkian in Lisbon, Portugal and Marco,
Museo de Arte Contemporánea de Vigo, Spain in 2010. The
accompanying catalog can be obtained through the gallery.
Javier Téllez will participate in TRACK at S.M.A.K. Ghent,
curated by Philippe Van Cauteren and Mirjam
Varadinis.
GALERIE PETER
KILCHMANN
Zahnradstrasse 21
CH-8005
Zurich
Switzerland
T: +41
44 278 10 10
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