CV 2001-2013
Simon Wachsmuth
geboren 1964 in Hamburg, lebt in Berlin
2013
Archäologie?! Spurensuche in der Gegenwart, Salzburg Museum/Kunsthalle
Signatures, Galerie Cora Hölzl, EY-5, Düsseldorf
Andere Ordnungen, Haus für die Kunst,Stiftung Wortelkamp, Haselbach
Cumuli – Vom Sammeln der Dinge, L40, Berlin
On ne connaît les chiffres que d’un côté du plan, art3, Valence
Einszehn, Zweizehn, Dreizehn, Kunstverein Friedrichshafen und Zeppelin Museum, Friedrichshafen
2012
Lieber Aby Warburg, Was Tun mit Bildern?, Museum für Gegenwartskunst Siegen
Garden of Learning, Busan-Biennale, Süd-Korea
Economy: Picasso, Museum
Picasso, Barcelona
2010
Atlas, or How to Carry the Worls on One´s Back, Museum
Reina Sophia, Madrid , ZKM,
Karlsruhe,
Sammlung Falckenberg, Hamburg
To the Arts, Citizens!, Museo Serralves, Porto
Seven little Mistakes, Museo Marino Marini, Florenz
Squatting, Temporäre Kunsthalle, Berlin
Tanzimat, Augarten Contemporary, Wien
2009
What Keeps Mankind Alive, 11. Istanbul-Bienniale, Istanbul
Die Ruhe ist ein spezieller Fall der Bewegung, Kunstmuseum Vaduz/Liechtenstein
Reduction & Suspense, Magazin 4, Bregenz
2008
Mnemosyne, Steinle Contemporary, München
Acht Minuten, Galerie Hohenlohe, Wien
Demonstration IV, Galerie Cora Hölzl, Düsseldorf
2007
a way of considering two things together, Physicsroom, Christchurch, Neuseeland
Documenta 12, Fridericianum, Kassel
2006
Soleil Noir, Salzburger Kunstverein, Salzburg
the things that I once saw I now can see no more, Kunstraum Dornbirn, Dornbirn
2005
Demonstration, Galerie Stadtpark, Krems
Kritische Gesellschaften (Critical Societies), Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe
The Government, Be what you want but stay where you are, Witte de With, Rotterdam
2004
The Government: How do we want to be governed, Miami Art Central, Miami
Die Regierung: Handlungen, die Handlungen setzen, Kunstraum der Universität Lüneburg
Of Copying, Galerie Hohenlohe, Wien
2003
earlgrey, Galerie Cora Hölzl, Düsseldorf
Interieur/Exterieur, Remise, Bludenz
2002
Organisational Forms, Galeria SKUC, Ljubljana; Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst, Leipzig
2001
Galerie Hohenlohe & Kalb, Wien
The Subject and Power, Haus der Künstler, Moskau
As Matter Stands
Simon Wachsmuth
3 Channel-Installation, 2012
“Garden of Learning” Busan-Biennale, 2012
Busan, South-Korea
Korean Origins
Of interest to Simon Wachsmuth are historical periods that vanish in the past. The neolithic age is such a period.
We don’t know much about it, and never will, except that it had been a formative age even for our modern ways
of inhabiting the world. These were the times when people invented agriculture and social hierarchies.
For Garden of Learning, Wachsmuth undertook a journey to Korea’s famous dolmen sites in Gochang, Hwasun,
and Ganghwa. The massive stones are markers of burial sites, their formal arrangement clearly reflecting what
once was considered appropriate or even necessary, but also what could be done in terms of manpower and
technique.
In his media installation, Wachsmuth gives an almost documentary account of those sites, projected as blackandwhite video. Two more video sequences are edited in synch with the black-and-white material: views of
display cases in a Folk Museum where we can observe the authentic life-style of the neolithic Korean, and a
sequence with a group of elderly people who collectively tend the dolmen site, but also engage in singing and
dancing.
Two small-size screens serve as counter-point to the three big screens. They show the artist’s hands arranging
and re-arranging a dolmen model in a playful manner.
Roger M. Buergel
As Matter Stands
In her book „Six Years, the dematerialisation of the art object from 1966 to 1972“, Lucy Lippard notes:
„Deliberately low-keyed art often resembles ruins, like neolithic rather than clasical monuments, amalgams of past
and future, remains of something „more“, vestiges of some unknown venture. The ghost of content continues to
hover
over the most obdurately abstract art. The more open, or ambigous, the experience offered, the more the viewer
is
forced to depend upon his (sic) own perceptions.“
Images and symbols from the past play a powerful role in the present. In many cases we can see how
archaeological
finds become essential in a modern discourse of identity and nation and how archaeological interpretation
can often reflect the policy of either an emerging nation-state or a state in a post-colonial condition.
History ceases to be a practice linked to the past and instead reveals the cracks through which it becomes an
activity intimately connected to the present.
For some time now, Wachsmuths work has been dealing with systems of historical information, which can be
traced in historic monuments. For the Documenta12 (2007), the artist has conceived an installation which
investigates
the relations between Persia/Iran and the western world, along the storylines of the antique ApadanaRelief from Persepolis. At the 9th Biennale of Istanbul (2009), Wachsmuths installation Parabasis has been
focusing
on the political implications of current archaeological and historical research, encircling the Neolithic, Greek,
Byzantine and Ottoman history of Turkey.
Within the framework of Korean history, it is the path that leads from the origins of the civilization on the Korean
peninsula up to todays understanding of history, that can be found in the centre of Wachsmuths investigation.
Especially the Neolithic period marks the beginning of a society with forms of communal life and defined social
communities and leadership, a historic moment of transformation still perceptible today. The role of archaeology
in Korean society is marked by a specific approach, always being close to the discourse in politics, academia,
popular media and the public consience. Archaeological theories, like the categorization of Korean prehistory
periods have been important as a way to counter the erroneous claims of Japanese colonial archaeologists who
insisted that, unlike Japan, Korea had no "Bronze Age", thus building arguments in a territorial discussion.
An interesting topic of archaeological excavations and a visual reminder of early cultures are the neolithic
dolmen, monuments constructed of large rocks. These megalithic stones, found both in Asia and Europe, mark
prehistoric burial sites. Korea has the largest concentration (40%) of dolmens worldwide. The Korean dolmen are
of great value for the information they provide about prehistoric social and political systems, beliefs and rituals,
indicating early human presence in the region.
Simon Wachsmuths 3-channel video-projection follows the presence of theses stones. In the films, the resource
of narration becomes something that updates both history and its visual forms. Filmed within different contexts
in Korea, the various formats of appearance of the dolmen are shown - sublime and enigmatic, poetic and hidden
as well as popular and commercialized, always hinting at the underlying narrative.
Parabasis
Simon Wachsmuth
Installation, 2009
11. Istanbul Biennale
Antrepo & former Greek School
Istanbul 2009
Atlas, or how to Carry the World on One´s Back
Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain
ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany
Falckenberg-Collection, Hamburg, Germany
coming:
Archaeology!?, Tracing Roots in Contemporary Art
Salzburg-Museum, Salzburg, Austria
(October 2013)
Parabasis
Simon Wachsmuth researches blind spots and unexpected epilogues in the grand narratives of history and art
history. He is interested in situations of ignorance and a funamental lack of information, when knowledge about
significant phenomenon is missing. His works often use an archival and pseudoscientific approach, and his
restricted vocabulary of forms facilitates an openness that prompts us to develop his/her own thoughts and
associations.
The title of the site-specific project Parabasis (2009) refers to a point in ancient Greek drama when all of the
actors leave the stage and the chorus addresses the audience directly, mostly expressing the author´s view on
political topics of the day. The artist has attempted to translate the parabasis form, which primarily operates with
presence and speech, into the world of images, objects and their representations.
Parabasis starts at the oldest man-made place of worship, Göbekli Tepe, built in 10.000 BC, and finishes in 2005
at
a site that turned out to be the oldest evidence of settlement in Istanbul, discovered during the construction of
the Marmaray, an undersea rail tunnel between Europe and Asia.
These prehistoric witnesses constitute an antipode to several important works of Western art, such as Piero della
Francescas fresco cycle in Arezzo (1447-1466), which tells the Legend of the true Cross by depicting the triumph
of the Emperor Constantine, the founder of Constantinople, or the fragmented Gigantomachia – the Great Altar
of Pergamon from the 2nd century BC in the ancient city of Pergamon (modern day Bergama in Turkey) in
northwestern
Anatolia. These works of art are taken as the starting point to launch a number of contentious issues
relating to European and Turkish self-awareness and understanding.
Catalogue/Istanbul-Biennale 2009
Parabasis
Simon Wachsmuth
Installation, 2009
Istanbul-Biennale 2009 - installation view at Antrepo Building
Parabasis
Simon Wachsmuth
Installation, 2009
Atlas, or How to Carry the World on One´s Back, Falckenberg Collection, Hamburg 2010
Parabasis
Simon Wachsmuth
Installation, 2009
Atlas, or How to Carry the World on One´s Back, Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid, 2009/2010, curated by
Georges Didi-Huberman
Where we were then, where we are now
Simon Wachsmuth
Installation, 2007
Documenta12
Kassel, Germany
To the Arts, Citizens!
Museu Serralves, Porto, Portugal
coming:
Österreichische Galerie im Belvedere / 21ger Haus, Vienna, Austria
(Nov/Dez 2013)
Where We Were Then, Where We Are Now
The way we approach historical eras is not just characterised by an awareness of loss. Their naming and
classification
is based on the attempt to at least partially bring back what is irretrievably lost. However this posteriority
determines not only our view of the past but also how we look at images of this past: both images that are staged
as authentic relics today and those that later generations first develop in engaging with these relics. At the centre
of Simon Wachsmuth´s installation is Pesrsepolis, the former royal city of the Achaemenid Empire destroyed by
troops of Alexander the Great in 330 BC and now located in Iran. Wachsmuth´s approach to this site, until today
often differently symbolically loaded, is not reconstructive or archaeological in the sense of securing findings but
a contribution to historical discursivation. The individual parts of the installation correspond in their reduced
formal language and black and white aesthetics while their thematic context seems unwieldy at first. The two
films show the ruins of Persepolis and Iranian men at the Zourkhaneh practising traditional physical exercises.
In the contrast between the paraphrase of the Alexander Mosaic from Pompeii in magnets and the boards
showing
images and text in the style of Warburg´s Mnemosyne Atlas, the the relationship between the present and
the past, as well as between the different cultures, is shown as one open to permanent renegotiation. Behind the
conflicting nature of the individual partes, which appear to form a whole through diverging in terms of content,
is an insistence on the multivoiced nature of historical narrative, itself constituted far more by fracture than by
continuity.
Dr. Karin Gludovatz / Documenta 12 catalogue, 2007
Where we were then, where we are now
Simon Wachsmuth
Installation, 2007
Documenta 12, Kassel, 2007 - Installation view at Friedericianum
Where we were then, where we are now
Simon Wachsmuth
Installation, 2007
Documenta 12, Kassel, 2007 - detail of the magnetic mosaic “Battle of Alexander”
Where we were then, where we are now
Simon Wachsmuth
Installation, 2007
Documenta 12, Kassel, 2007 - Installation view at Friedericianum
Where we were then, where we are now
Simon Wachsmuth
Installation, 2007
Documenta 12, Kassel, 2007 - Filmstill and archival image (Persepolis)
Where we were then, where we are now
Simon Wachsmuth
Installation, 2007
Installation view, Seven Little Mistakes, Museo Marino Marini, Florence 2010
Where we were then, where we are now
Simon Wachsmuth
Installation, 2007
Installation view, Seven Little Mistakes, Museo Marino Marini, Florence 2010
Where we were then, where we are now
Simon Wachsmuth
Installation, 2007
Installation view: To the Arts, Citizens! - Museo Serralves, Porto 2010/11
Parathesis
Simon Wachsmuth
Installation, 2011
Steinle Contemporary, Munich, Germany 2011
Parathesis
Simon Wachsmuth
Installation, 2011
Photographies and materials from the former image-archive of the Free University Berlin
Installation at Gallery Steinle Contemporary, Munich 2011
Parathesis
Simon Wachsmuth
Installation, 2011
Materials from the former image-archive of the Free University Berlin
Index
Simon Wachsmuth
Installation, 2011
Parathesis, Gallery Steinle Contemporary, Munich 2011
Slide projection with slides from the former image-archive of the Free University Berlin, dimensions
variable
Untitled (Sanliurfa)
Simon Wachsmuth
2009, fineartprints
Parathesis, Gallery Steinle Contemporary, Munich, 2011
Aporia / Europa
Simon Wachsmuth
Installation / painting-cycle, 2008-2010
Aporia/Europa
Gallery at the Taxis-Palais, Innsbruck, Austria 2010
Lieber Aby Warburg, Was tun mit Bildern?
Museum of Contemporary Art, Siegen, Germany 2012
Aporia / Europa
Simon Wachsmuth
Installation / painting-cycle, 2008-2010
Gallerie im Taxispalais, Innsbruck 2010