Initiation into the Sub-Culture:
“Heavenly Creatures”
in the Kunstraum at Deutsche Bank Salzburg
Positions in young American figurative painting will be presented in an
unusual group exhibition in the Kunstraum at Deutsche Bank Salzburg from
7/22 through 8/31. Initiated by the Thaddaeus Ropac Gallery, “Heavenly
Creatures” transports the viewer into the realm of juvenile desire while
addressing the uncanny, the ghostly, and the romantic in popular culture.
“The nicest people almost always have weak lungs or bone diseases. Isn’t that
awfully romantic?” asks the character played by
Kate Winslet in Peter
Jackson’s film
Heavenly Creatures, made in 1994. Based on a real incident,
Jackson tells the story of two young girls who become friends in the early
fifties in Christchurch, New Zealand; in a love relationship that bears
homoerotic traits, they descend into a psychotic fantasy world of medieval
kingdoms and paradisiacal gardens, only to finally commit one very real
murder.
Hideaki Kawashima: Dark Idea, 2004
Courtesy Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Salzburg
Teenage Angst, romanticism, a longing for death, the desire for intimacy
and protection: in the context of the new event series NEXT GENERATION,
the Thaddaeus Ropac Gallery is
currently putting on an unusual exhibition in the Kunstraum at Deutsche
Bank Salzburg; its title Heavenly Creatures draws on the very
elements that lent the film of the same name its cult status. Curated by
the artist Lisa Ruyter, who
divides her time between New York and Vienna, and the New York-based art
historian Max Henry, the show presents international positions among
artists of the younger generation that address the genre of portraiture
and the representation of the human body in painting. At the same time,
there is an interest in portraying abysmal alternative worlds, the realm
of the subconscious, the uncanny, and the repressed – the “awfully
romantic” desires of a youth culture that drives its parents to tears and
that nourishes itself on the media images of a gigantic entertainment and
fashion industry.
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Rita Ackermann: You knocked the salt over,
Installation, 2004
Courtesy
Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Salzburg
While
today’s heavenly creatures like to listen to
Marilyn Manson or slink through night clubs dressed as androgynous dandies
in designer clothing by
Victor and Rolf, the image on the exhibition’s invitation card seems to
suggest that the path to the other side is paved with a knowledge of
certain rituals: You knocked the salt over, the 2004 installation
by the New York-based artist
Rita Ackermann, portrays a veritable Witch’s Sabbath, a secret society of
perilous urban beauties attending to their magical and erotic tasks,
apparently inspired by Goya and Grunge alike. The soot-black cauldron in
Ackermann’s installation seems to imply that art is alchemy. In this vein,
for many of the artists shown in Heavenly Creatures, an
experimentation with gender roles and identities is connected to a deep
familiarity with the visual language of mass culture whose ingredients
inspire dreams of beauty, sex, and rebellion.
The curators of
Heavenly Creatures, however, deliberately juxtapose these promises of
collective happiness and organized political commitment with signs of
personal myth and obsession. “Our icons have disappointed us, whether
they’re VIPs, priests, politicians, or athletes. Despite this, art still
stubbornly attempts to harmonize all the various influences surrounding
us,” according to a statement on the exhibition. In turning to their own
fantastic and secretive symbols, which derive as much from popular culture
as they do from art history, they’re entirely en vogue. Thus, Frankfurt’s
Schirn Kunsthalle is planning a large exhibition on the theme next year
with the show
Ideal Worlds – New Romanticism in Contemporary Art. Fed up with
bad news, war reports, and destructive images of terror, artists have
begun searching for places of security and refuge, according to the makers
of the Romanticism exhibition. The need for escape, ideals, and hope of
rescue is becoming more and more urgent; ultimately, it is a longing for
an eternally safe and secure world. A whole group of young painters has
turned resolutely to the Romantic spirit, to the longing for the
paradisiacal, the beautiful, and the fairy tale-like.
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