Jobst Meyer

ART DÜSSELDORF

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EXILE is pleased to participate in this year’s Art Düsseldorf with a presentation of works by Tess Jaray (born 1937), Kerstin von Gabain (born 1979), Nschotschi Haslinger (born 1982), and Jobst Meyer (1940-2017). You can find us at booth F06.

 

 

→Tess Jaray
→Kerstin von Gabain
→Nschotschi Haslinger
→Jobst Meyer
→Art Düsseldorf

 

ART COLOGNE

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EXILE is returning to Art Cologne with a presentation of works by Astrid Proll (*1947), Jobst Meyer (1940-2017), Sine Hansen (1942-2009), and Zuzanna Czebatul (*1986) as part of the fair’s Collaborations sector. The presentation interweaves various political times and artworks to create a web of interferences that collectively point to contemporary challenges:

1945
Josef Weinheber (1892-1945), a popular German-language poet and devout Nazi commits suicide in advance of the Russian troops to Vienna in April 1945. His exiled peer, Theodor Kramer (1897-1958) writes Requiem für einen Faschisten in response to his former peer’s suicide.¹ 

1969
Astrid Proll collaborates in the escape of Andreas Baader from the German justice system. Together with Gudrun Ennslin, Peter Borsch, and Thorwald Proll they escape to Paris and take the images later known as Pictures on the Run at a café and private apartment in Paris. Consecutively, the camera is taken away from Proll and disappears.²

Early 1970s
Influenced by the appalling atrocities of the ongoing Vietnam War and repressive domestic politics in Germany, Jobst Meyer paints a series of large-scale canvases picturing tent-like structures depicting charged symbolisms reminiscent of battlefields or war zones. Kreuzzelt and Spaten, 1973, exhibited at the fair, is a rare remaining example.¹

Mid 1970s
The roll of film taken away from Proll in 1969 reappears at Der Stern magazine who markets the images as part of their picture library. Proll lives undercover as Anna Puttick in London and works as a car mechanic.² 

Late 1970s
Following her early success, Sine Hansen increasingly withdraws from the artworld and paints her Spannungszangen series out of which two examples are on display at the fair. The large-format painting entitled Die Rote, 1979, arguably a commentary on the repressive political situation of late 1970s Germany, has not been shown since production.³

1980s
The negatives of Pictures on the Run disappear again. Proll receives a set of press prints from Der Stern and further collects images from this roll of film from various other sources.² 

1998
Astrid Proll publishes Baader Meinhof: Pictures on the Run ’67-77. Alongside other images taken by arresting police officers and newspaper journalists the publication includes the 1969 Paris photos. Concurrently to a feature in British life-style magazine Dazed & Confused, Proll is invited to create an exhibition alongside the publication which is curated by influential German photographer, curator and collector F.C. Gundlach (1926-2021).²

2021
A statue of Joseph Weinheber remains prominently displayed near EXILE’s location in Vienna igniting the exhibition Monument Error with works by Jobst Meyer and Zuzanna Czebatul. As part of the exhibition, Czebatul digitizes the statue and renders a distorted monument from the source.¹

2023
Astrid Proll exhibits at EXILE Erfurt.²
Perpetual (Weinheber), 2023 by Zuzanna Czebatul, Kreuzzelt und Spaten, 1973 by Jobst Meyer, Die Rote, 1979 by Sine Hansen, and Astrid Proll’s original set of Pictures on the Run, last seen in 1998, are exhibited collaboratively at Art Cologne. Please find us at Hall 11.2, booth A 212.4

The exhibited works collaboratively aim to apply parallels of past repressive political climates to today’s realities.

This presentation at Art Cologne is kindly supported by Wirtschaftsagentur Wien. Ein Fonds der Stadt Wien.

 

¹→Zuzanna Czebatul and Jobst Meyer: Monument Error

²→Astrid Proll: Pictures on the Run

³→Sine Hansen: Spannungszangen

4→artcologne.com

 

Monument Error

Posted on by Regina Regina

Du warst in allem einer ihrer Besten,
erschrocken fühl ich heut mich dir verwandt;
du schwelgtest gerne bei den gleichen Festen
und zogst wie ich oft wochenlang durchs Land.
Es füllte dich wie mich der gleiche Ekel
vor dem Geklügel ohne innern Drang,
vor jedem Wortgekletzel und Gehäkel;
nichts galt dir als der schöne Überschwang.

So zog es dich zu ihnen die marschierten;
wer weiß da, wann du auf dem Weg ins Nichts
gewahr der Zeichen wurdest, die sie zierten?
Du liegst gefällt am Tage des Gerichts.
Ich hätte dich mit eigner Hand erschlagen;
denn unser keiner hatte die Geduld,
in deiner Sprache dir den Weg zu sagen:
dein Tod ist unsre, ist auch meine Schuld.

Ich setz für dich am Abend diese Zeilen,
da schrill die Grille ihre Beine reibt
wie du es liebtest, und der Seim im geilen
Faulbaum im Kreis die schwarzen Käfer treibt.
Daß wir des Tods und Ursprungs nicht vergessen,
wann jeder Brot hat und zum Brot auch Wein,
vom Überschwang zu singen wie besessen,
soll um dich, Bruder, meine Klage sein.

Theodor Kramer: Requiem für einen Faschisten, 1945

 

Monuments cast shadows, depending on the light and time of day, as much as the course of history, either as hard-edged contrasts or as faint and blurry shapes of fading light and time. Meanings of, and relationships to, particular monuments are in flux alongside socio-political or cultural changes within the society they are embedded in. Old and new discourses, reactions, and conflicts arise around certain personalities on bronze-cast public display while others remain tolerated, ignored or forgotten, often in plain sight.

One such monument, placed on a public square in close proximity to the gallery, throws its shadow onto the exhibition space and becomes the distant anchor around which the works by Zuzanna Czebatul and Jobst Meyer oscillate. The memorial bust in question, positioned less than 200 meters from the gallery on Schillerplatz, was created in 1940 by sculptor Josef Bock and shows the head of the novelist and poet Josef Weinheber.

Weinheber’s blurry image, a side product of the rendering process for Czebatul’s work Untitled (2022), becomes the exhibition’s access point and invisible ghost – on one side asking question about the role, urgency and legitimacy of the specific persona on public display, on the other, broader questions around meaning and handling of static monuments as signs for politically enforced systemic doctrine and dominance in contrast to shifting values in transitional times. Arranged in two rooms, the selected works in the exhibition by Zuzanna Czebatul and Jobst Meyer approach such questions. 

The ground floor space is confined by two large-scale paintings by Jobst Meyer, entitled Zelt, Kreuzfahne und Sicheln (1973) and Kreuzzelt und Spaten (1973). Both works show lazarett-like hospital tents placed in a nondescript landscape. Each tent is decorated with a cross symbol, either painted directly onto the tent or attached to the tent in the form of a Red Cross banner. Placed in front of the tents, or attached to them by rope, are either a single spate or a set of sickles. These collected iconographies of battlefields, war, civil unrest or other traumas cover most of the canvas and act as barriers that block deeper insight into the landscape behind. Painted in the early 1970s, the imagery of such temporary tent structures remains familiar from various global war-zones, refugee camps or increasingly also as aftermaths of natural disaster. What is happening inside the tent is visually hidden, yet known to the viewer regardless. In a sense, these tents act like mirrors reflecting back onto the viewer, turning them into the actor within this otherwise static setting.

Placed in a straight line inbetween the two paintings are Zuzanna Czebatul’s quite monumental Columns of Empire (2021). Assembled from various parts of protective sports and riot gear, these punching bag-like structures hover low above the floor. Spray-painted black and in scale relational to the human body, their appearance is reminiscent of ancient warrior uniforms or indigenous ritualistic artifacts while simultaneously suggesting contemporary riot gear police uniforms. In Columns of Empire as well as in the paintings by Meyer, the individual is subsumed beneath a meta structure with the unclear purpose of protecting or harming the individual. 

In the second room, Weinheber, until now only present as a ghost within the exhibition space, appears in the form of a replica of the source memorial on local display on Schillerplatz. Produced via a digital 3D printing process, the originality of the source bust becomes a mundane, low-tech replica. Czebatul’s oxidized copper application process though gives Untitled (2022) the surface of a painterly, almost hyper-real, or battered patina, as if the source bust’s precious metal was projectiled into a distant, uncertain future. 

The replicant bust is placed on top of a low floating pedestal whose black and white, marble-esque pattern and shape suggest the original pedestal’s integrity as disrupted, melted or in the process of dissolving. Untitled (2022) liquefies Weinheber’s stale bronze-cast authority, though instead of morally denouncing Weinheber, the work deliberately trivializes the source bust’s authority and asks questions about the legitimacy of the original memorial. With Untitled (2022) Czebatul asks which version, if any, is the appropriate monument. 

Placed alongside the work by Czebatul are five Untitled (1978) works on paper by Jobst Meyer. These show various conical or pyramidal forms, always cut, pierced or otherwise distorted by thorns, spikes or bent shapes. Similar to Meyer’s paintings downstairs, the artist asks about the socio-political meaning of such structural shapes that are deeply ingrained in human history and conscience. Viewed collectively, the works in this room appear as if presenting the results of an architectural competition for a fictional monument that asks the viewer how to respond and relate to the current debate about such problematic monuments on public display. 

Zuzanna Cebatul’s and Jobst Meyer’s works, as much comical phantasies of absurdist monuments as serious metaphors for social injustices, allegorically point to the complexities, challenges and difficulties of any monument on public display. No singular reading, no clear opinion, no monolithic response, no black and white answer is certain within such a memorial  itself. Instead, an open and critical discourse is required around each monument within the public sphere. To physically remove a monument is easy, to deal with its complex legacy is a continuous challenge. The ghost of Weinheber remains, yet it is Theodor Kramer’s poem that this text began with and refers back to. 

 

Theodor Kramer (1897-1958) was an Austrian poet who was forced into exile in 1939. In May 1945, in response to his former peer’s Josef Weinheber suicide, he wrote Requiem für einen Faschisten. Kramer returned to Vienna in 1957 and is buried in Zentralfriedhof.

Josef Weinheber (1892-1945) was a popular German-language poet under the Nazi regime. An early member of the NSDAP, Weinheber was a passionate anti-Semite and devout Nazi. Ideologically blinded, and unable to face the defeat of the Nazi regime and ideology, he committed suicide in advance of the Russian troops to Vienna in April 1945.

Zuzanna Czebatul (b. 1986, Międzyrzecz) lives and works in Berlin. She graduated from the Städelschule Frankfurt in 2013, and later attended the MFA program at Hunter College as a Fulbright Fellow. Czebatul has had solo exhibitions at Kunstpalais Erlangen (2021); CAC Synagogue de Delme (2020); Sans titre (2016), Paris (2020); GGM1 Municipal Gallery, Gdańsk (2019); FUTURA Center for Contemporary Art, Prague (2018); CCA Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw (2017) and others. Czebatul has participated in group exhibitions at Athens Biennale (2021); Baltic Triennial, Vilnius (2021); Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen (2021); Berlinische Galerie, Berlin (2021); Wrocław Biennale (2021); CAN Centre d’art Neûchatel (2020); Somerset House, London (2019); Muzeum Śląskie, Katowice (2019); Kunsthalle Lingen (2019); Kunsthalle Bratislava (2019); BWA Lublin (2018); Muzeum of Modern Art Warsaw (2017) and the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis (2016). In 2022 the artist will participate in the Geneva Biennale: Sculpture Garden, curated by Devrim Bayar, and will have a solo exhibition at Arthur-Boskamp-Stiftung, Hohenlockstedt amongst others.

Jobst Meyer (1940-2017) studied at Akademie der bildenden Künste, Karlsruhe (1960-63), and at Hochschule für bildende Künste, Berlin (1963-68). From 1982-2010 Meyer taught at the Hochschule für bildenden Künste, Braunschweig. In 1973, he received the Villa Romana award and residency in Florence, Italy where the two paintings on display were created. Meyer exhibited in numerous solo exhibitions, amongst them Galerie Junge Generation, Hamburg (1967); Forum Stadtpark, Graz (1969); Galerie Klang, Cologne (1973, 1974), Galerie Thomas Wagner, Berlin (1975), Galerie Niepel, Düsseldorf (1981, 1991) and Landesmuseum Oldenburg (1998). He participated in many group exhibitions, amongst them at Kunsthalle Baden-Baden (1966), Kunsthalle Recklinghausen (1967, 1969), Kunsthalle Nürnberg (1968), Kunstverein Salzburg (1970),  Haus der Kunst, Munich (1970), Akademie der Künste, Berlin (1973), Kunsthalle Kiel (1977), Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf (1982), Ludwig Forum, Aachen (1992), and Kunstmuseum Mülheim an der Ruhr (2016). His work is in the public collections of Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Berlinische Galerie, Rheinisches Landesmuseum, and Bundeskunstsammlung, Germany.

Further research
→de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodor_Kramer_(Lyriker)
→theodorkramer.at
→Requiem für einen Faschisten read by Kramer
→de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_Weinheber
→weinheber.net
→Weinheber Memorial location

Press
→Nicole Scheyerer: Fragwürdiges Denkmal in Reichweite, FALTER 07/22
→Domen Ograjensek: Threatening Tips and Protective Films; The Gothic Ontology of Political Strife

Features
→OFLUXO
→Mousse Magazine
→Art Viewer
→Contemporary Art Daily

 

Konstruktionen der Neunziger

Posted on by Regina Regina

EXILE is pleased to invite you to the inaugural exhibition of our new exhibition space in the German city of Erfurt, Thuringia on March 18, 2023 presenting a solo exhibition by German artist Jobst Meyer (1940-2017) entitled Konstruktionen der Neunziger. The exhibition focuses on works created by the artist during the eponymous decade that reflect upon the fundamental socio-political changes predominantly experienced in the East German states of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) as a result of German unification.

Bouquets of unpredictable implications

Still-life painting as an independent genre first flourished in the Netherlands during the early 1600s. Various fruits, vegetables as well as insects, dead game or precious items were painstakingly arranged on wooden table tops most commonly in front of dark, monochrome backgrounds. Immaculately executed and at first sight just formally decorative, these arranged objects represented more than what meets the eye. Each flower, fruit, vegetable, animal or object could hold an inscribed symbolic value beyond its painterly surface. Reflecting upon the growing autonomy of the bourgeois class, these paintings, themselves luxury objects, were commissioned to represent the social status and moral integrity of mercantile traders in an increasingly connected and urbanized society.

A common thread in the predominantly Dutch or Flemish floral still-life paintings is the assemblage of flowers from different countries or even continents in one vase and at one impossible moment of collective blooming. Still-life paintings became constructions of reality according to a client’s requests that communicated moral codes as well as social status through the painted arrangements of objects. Today, many of these specific meanings or codes are unknown to the majority of viewers, hence what might have appeared obvious to the elusive circles these paintings were originally aimed for is today left to specialized art-historical knowledge.

The 1990s, the decade in which Jobst Meyer painted the seven works exhibited in the exhibition, was characterized by substantial socio-political changes in East and West Germany. Following large scale protests in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and the subsequent fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, both east and west German societies entered a complex process of transition. What seems as a historical given today, the German unification under a predominantly West-German capitalist system, was by no means certain in the early 1990s and even past unification further positive as well as negative social transformations impacted both parts of the newly unified Germany.

In his paintings, Meyer references technical as well as formal attributes of traditional still-life painting. On a technical level, Meyer exclusively worked with self-made, non-industrial tempera paints that he carefully layered on top of on another. On a formal level, Meyer’s works follow his predecessor’s three-fold compositional split into table-top, objects arranged upon and staged in front of an often plain, dark background. Meyer exchanges the predominantly natural objects with abstract forms ranging from crosses, hard-edged spikes, and moon-like shapes, to shapes that appear as if in stages of in-between. Physical objects appear in form of musical instrument-like trumpets or horns, wheel or ladder-like structures, or letters of the alphabet. Many of the more or less distinct shapes and objects in Meyer’s paintings seem to be caught in a kind of morphing, transitioning, intertwining or merging state from one form to another creating compositions that seem caught in an almost filmic state of flux just like an interim page of a flip book. These complex structures are placed upon textured plains quite similar to the table tops used in the paintings of his 17th century predecessors. The plain, usually dark and monochrome background’s is replaced in Meyer’s paintings with equally monochrome, yet often fiercely colorful, or in some cases wallpaper-like patterned, backgrounds.

On an interpretational level, Meyer’s painted compositions might also mean much more than what meets the eye at first glance. Especially when seen in context with the date of production, his paintings can appear as a graphic analysis of society in transition. Like the often impossible intersecting floral attributes of the 17th century, Meyer’s paintings invite the viewer to reflect on what these various symbols as well as their in-between stages can mean by themselves as well as within the overall formal composition. Is an electrified, bulb-like doubled flash, or a cross in its morphing distortion reminiscent of popularized right-wing insignia? If so, does Meyer interpret the troubling rise of neo-fascism in both parts of Germany as a consequence of German unification? Does Meyer, who also designed posters for some May 1st demonstrations and other left-wing political agendas, paint a rather dystopian view of the developments in 1990s Germany that critically questions the common narrative of the peacefully unified nation? Does Meyer’s pastel to vibrant color palette lure the viewer into visual consumerism that lays a cotton candy-esque diffusion over the greater societal challenges addressed in the works? Finally, are these works specific to 1990s social change in Germany or do they not have more universal questions embedded?

A particular link between Meyer’s work and the historical reference is the inclusion of loafs of bread in some of the works. While a rather basic food source not meant to elevate a patron’s status, it does find itself in many 17th century kitchen still-life paintings as symbolizing either the body of Christ, the simplicity of everyday life or a certain moral humility. In Meyer’s paintings, bread appears in form of a conventional baguette and is the only clearly defined and undistortedly painted object. Meyer’s reasons for being so particular and specific are unknown and we can only interpret. Yet, the inclusion of bread, as a basic food for human existence and survival might be seen as an intentional hint by the artist towards a socio-political reading of the artworks. Potentially this loaf of bread can even function as the concrete link or access point for an analysis of the work in the tradition of still-life painting past a formal surface?

In difference to the historical predecessor, Jobst Meyer was not painting for a patron or client but acted as an autonomous artist whose overall social, political as well as creative personality is embedded in his works. Meyer’s painted constructions hold no elitist codes readable only by the select few, instead the artist uses shapes and forms that are universally open and accessible to all. Yet Meyer did not have a large audience for his work in later stages of life and so these paintings were, to this moment, not seen by many. With time having passed since their production in the 1990s a new reading of Meyer’s work is possible and the urgency to critically address, question, and reflect upon dangers to civil societies remains fundamentally important today. Meyer’s paintings, when exhibited in the city of Erfurt in 2023, invite the viewer to analyze and abstract from the paintings’ symbolism, to the local placement, to the particular time we live in.

 

Meyer’s works from the 1970s were previously exhibited at EXILE as part of the duo exhibition Monument Error in 2021.

Parallel to this exhibition, EXILE Vienna hosts the second solo exhibition by Jobst Meyer’s partner Sine Hansen (1942-2009). The exhibition is entitled Spannungszangen and features paintings created during the 1970s.

Jobst Meyer (1940-2017) studied at Akademie der bildenden Künste, Karlsruhe (1960-63), and at Hochschule der Künste, Berlin (1963-68). From 1982-2010 Meyer taught at the Hochschule für bildenden Künste, Braunschweig. In 1973, he received the Villa Romana award and residency in Florence, Italy. Meyer exhibited in numerous solo exhibitions, amongst them Galerie Junge Generation, Hamburg (1967); Forum Stadtpark, Graz (1969); Galerie Klang, Cologne (1973, 1974), Galerie Thomas Wagner, Berlin (1975), Galerie Niepel, Düsseldorf (1981, 1991) and Landesmuseum Oldenburg (1998). Selected group exhibitions include Kunsthalle Baden-Baden (1966), Kunsthalle Recklinghausen (1967, 1969), Kunsthalle Nürnberg (1968), Kunstverein Salzburg (1970), Haus der Kunst, Munich (1970), Akademie der Künste, Berlin (1973), Kunsthalle Kiel (1977), Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf (1982), Ludwig Forum, Aachen (1992), and Kunstmuseum Mülheim an der Ruhr (2016). Amongst others, his work is in the public collections of Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Berlinische Galerie, Rheinisches Landesmuseum, and Bundeskunstsammlung, Germany.

→Monument Error

→Sine Hansen: Spannungszangen at EXILE Vienna

→EXILE Erfurt, Kartausengarten 6, 99084 Erfurt, Germany

Features
→Contemporary Art Daily
→KUBAPARIS