Simon Wachsmuth: A way of considering two things

10 October – 3 November 2007

Simon Wachsmuth

Opening preview: Tuesday 9 October 2007, 5.30pm

Presenting recent work by German artist Simon Wachsmuth for the first time in New Zealand, a way of considering two things together provides the opportunity of just that, as Wachsmuth’s installation seeks to question our social conceptions of history and the sublime fascinations of the natural world.

Recently exhibited at documenta 12, Persepolis presents focused depictions of the Apadana frieze preserved within the ruined Persian city and the contemporary context of this UNESCO World Heritage site. Located within what is now the modern nation of Iran, Wachsmuth slowly traces the length of the relief, profiling various heads of state, soldiers, animals and offerings in the process of chronicling what physically remains of the lost city.

Incised initials, names and dates of the touristic hoards that have come and gone from the site over the centuries fall in and out of the frame as Wachsmuth’s recordings capture the ambient presence of contemporary visitors and the ecologies that populate and structure experience of Persepolis as palimpsest.

When set in counterpoint to Pulad Zurkhaneh, another moving image work which depicts a group of men performing traditional callisthenics preserved within the collective memory and social traditions of Iran, Wachsmuth’s installation allows for an unusual vantage on a traditional culture unfamiliar to many.

The patient unfolding of Wachsmuth’s films stand in resolute testament to the fragmentary and fleeting depictions that populate our field of vision everyday. Wachsmuth’s Hiking series, installed in the gallery’s rear screening room, cleverly highlights the provisionality of mediated depictions of terrain and location, estranging the social function of personal exploration through his contemporary re-enactment of the German landscape painter Heinrich Reinhold’s study tour through the Austrian Alps in 1819. In this work, accompanied by long walking sticks, Wachsmuth’s unusually clad figures traverse the landscape on screen while the wooden sticks that ventured alongside them stand as testament and residual trace within the gallery, reconnecting Wachsmuth’s disembodied performances with the physical half a world away.

Accommodating a number of recent meditations within the challenging context of the ‘new world’, a way of considering two things together plays a subtle game with visual and historical vocabularies of experience and will gain much from its positioning within the complexities of our more ‘distant’ local context.

Simon Wachsmuth grew up in Hamburg and Tel Aviv and now lives and works in Berlin. He graduated from the University of Applied Arts in Vienna having studied painting (1984–1987) and visual media-design (1987–1995) and has exhibited with an extensive array of art institutions including Miami Art Central (2004), Witte de With, Rotterdam (2005), Salzburger Kustverein (2006) and he also took part in documenta 12 earlier this year with the project Where We Were Then. Where We Are Now?, elements of which are included in this exhibition for The Physics Room.

ENDS

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