Klara Meinhardt: Ritual
22 April—27 May 2017
Klara Meinhardt. »Ritual«. Drawing Object.
The ritual is creation. On the one hand a formality, organized as a solemnly sublime act, conventional, with defined accessories, standardized language and action formulas and practiced as rigid repetition—it is the opposite of art, which draws its power of action much more from free inspiration and individual creative will. On the other hand, every rite is based on symbolic actions, on insignia charged with meaning, and creates a communicative interaction that both confines and excludes. Here the ritual comes very close to art. The show moves within this field of tension.
Klara Meinhardt works with concrete, steel, paper and textiles, the raw materials of the civilized present. She uses them to create unique objects, strangely heightened creations, which she condenses into symbols of industrial society, into formulas of uncompromising zeitgeist. The outer appearance provokes the eye. There are colourfully iridescent, organic-looking concrete objects, then technical drawings with strangely inaccurate entries, and finally thyrsos replicas with metal chains and pipe clips. All three cycles of works describe, in different ways, inherently the instructions for use of modern quality of life.
The staging in space allows the works to be read as rituals that have either taken on an unreflected life of their own, or come back as revivals of archaic cult and status symbols, or emerge as a longing for transcendence within the Conditio Humana. At the same time, they contain the inversion of ritual; its reversal and the latent counterproductive emptying of the meaning of civil society conventions.
Thus in »Best of Breed« [2015]. The three objects connect man and nature in the relation of art and science in an exemplary way in the cultic symbiosis of man and dog. The optimization of duality, standardization of animals and targeted breeding measures provoke deformation. The expression of the pathologically controlled metamorphosis are oversized ulcers, shown as concrete objects, weighing up to 100 kg, cast, tied up and sprayed with inorganically reflecting interference paint. An expression of the perversion of a need that has become independent without reflection.
The drawings of the series »Kult« [2016/17] are based on slides of technical components. As construction drawings of machines and vehicle elements, they make use of basic geometric shapes, a raw, objective set of figures. Lines, circles, symmetry, compact forms and broken surfaces seduce the imagination back to symbolic primeval forms and transform into cult ornaments by looking at them, adding and painting over them with graphite, charcoal, chalk and ink. Titles such as »Pandora«, »Oracle«, "Scarab" and others transform the drawings and their objects with this reformulation into promises of happiness, into false promises of beautiful appearance and become an expression of the longing for sensual and supernatural reference.
Closest to the ritual are the »Thyrsoi« [2017]. The two-metre long, elaborately designed steel tubes bear a recognisable resemblance to the bacchants' staff, the insignia above all of Dionysus, god of wine, joy, fertility, but also of excessive pleasure, madness and ecstasy. In traditional depictions, the thyrsos with its elaborate crowning of ivy and vine leaves denotes the divine sphere and debauched orgies of pleasure. And he combines the sign of divine power with intoxicating vitality, carefreeness but also the defensiveness of a spear-like weapon. As such a complex attribute, the thyrsos is ideally suited to be the cult object of contemporary party society. The party wand, which can be found today as an accessory at ecstatic music festivals, has its rough edges with Klara Meinhardt. Screws, metallic composite pieces, pipe elements and steel chains make the timeless symbol an ambivalent symbol of the belief in technical progress and the longing for a higher order in the world of life.
—By Tina Simon
______________
Dr. phil. Tina Simon
Author and publicist, Leipzig
The ritual is creation. On the one hand a formality, organized as a solemnly sublime act, conventional, with defined accessories, standardized language and action formulas and practiced as rigid repetition—it is the opposite of art, which draws its power of action much more from free inspiration and individual creative will. On the other hand, every rite is based on symbolic actions, on insignia charged with meaning, and creates a communicative interaction that both confines and excludes. Here the ritual comes very close to art. The show moves within this field of tension.
Klara Meinhardt works with concrete, steel, paper and textiles, the raw materials of the civilized present. She uses them to create unique objects, strangely heightened creations, which she condenses into symbols of industrial society, into formulas of uncompromising zeitgeist. The outer appearance provokes the eye. There are colourfully iridescent, organic-looking concrete objects, then technical drawings with strangely inaccurate entries, and finally thyrsos replicas with metal chains and pipe clips. All three cycles of works describe, in different ways, inherently the instructions for use of modern quality of life.
The staging in space allows the works to be read as rituals that have either taken on an unreflected life of their own, or come back as revivals of archaic cult and status symbols, or emerge as a longing for transcendence within the Conditio Humana. At the same time, they contain the inversion of ritual; its reversal and the latent counterproductive emptying of the meaning of civil society conventions.
Thus in »Best of Breed« [2015]. The three objects connect man and nature in the relation of art and science in an exemplary way in the cultic symbiosis of man and dog. The optimization of duality, standardization of animals and targeted breeding measures provoke deformation. The expression of the pathologically controlled metamorphosis are oversized ulcers, shown as concrete objects, weighing up to 100 kg, cast, tied up and sprayed with inorganically reflecting interference paint. An expression of the perversion of a need that has become independent without reflection.
The drawings of the series »Kult« [2016/17] are based on slides of technical components. As construction drawings of machines and vehicle elements, they make use of basic geometric shapes, a raw, objective set of figures. Lines, circles, symmetry, compact forms and broken surfaces seduce the imagination back to symbolic primeval forms and transform into cult ornaments by looking at them, adding and painting over them with graphite, charcoal, chalk and ink. Titles such as »Pandora«, »Oracle«, "Scarab" and others transform the drawings and their objects with this reformulation into promises of happiness, into false promises of beautiful appearance and become an expression of the longing for sensual and supernatural reference.
Closest to the ritual are the »Thyrsoi« [2017]. The two-metre long, elaborately designed steel tubes bear a recognisable resemblance to the bacchants' staff, the insignia above all of Dionysus, god of wine, joy, fertility, but also of excessive pleasure, madness and ecstasy. In traditional depictions, the thyrsos with its elaborate crowning of ivy and vine leaves denotes the divine sphere and debauched orgies of pleasure. And he combines the sign of divine power with intoxicating vitality, carefreeness but also the defensiveness of a spear-like weapon. As such a complex attribute, the thyrsos is ideally suited to be the cult object of contemporary party society. The party wand, which can be found today as an accessory at ecstatic music festivals, has its rough edges with Klara Meinhardt. Screws, metallic composite pieces, pipe elements and steel chains make the timeless symbol an ambivalent symbol of the belief in technical progress and the longing for a higher order in the world of life.
—By Tina Simon
______________
Dr. phil. Tina Simon
Author and publicist, Leipzig