Adam Szymczyk and documenta 14

Current art in Kassel – a selection

The Greek art scene is well represented in other venues at documenta 14. Andreas Angelidakis (*1968 Athens, Ill. 21), a former architect and now a pictorial artist and curator, takes his inspiration from ancient Greek mythology to show a rather abstract personification of war, “Polemos” (2017), in the form of a tank made of foam-filled, spotted camouflage seat modules. Zafos Xagoraris (*1963 Athens, Ill. 22) bids farewell to visitors with a typical railway sign in Greek (for “Goodbye”) at an impressive documenta 14 site, the exit of the disused underground regional railway in Kassel. This is a possible reminder of the 7000 Greek prisoners of war who were interned in Görlitz during the First World War. An impressive documentary video film entitled “The Secret School” (2009) by the Athens filmmaker, Marina Gioti (*1972 Athens, Ill. 23), recalls the illegal schools run by the Greek Orthodox church in the late phase of the Ottoman Empire.

Recent work from Poland by Uklański and Żmijewski can be seen in the show curated by Szymczyk. In Kassel visitors can see a wall-filling tableau by Uklański showing 203 photographic portraits of “Real Nazis” (2017, Ill. 24), taken from different sources. It includes propaganda shots of unknown people from Nazi periodicals and books, in the centre of which is a portrait of Hitler crossed out in red. A plaque lists the people who are portrayed in their precise position in the tableau along with the origin of the photos. For the exhibition in Athens Uklański invited the American artist pair, McDermott & McGough, to show seven paintings from their cycle "Hitler and the Homosexuals”, made in 2001. Opposite this, Uklański shows 32 stills from Leni Riefenstahl’s 1938 propaganda film “Olympia” in an installation entitled “The Greek Way” (2017, Ill. 25a, b). In Kassel, Żmijewski shows a video installation entitled “Realism” (2017, Ill. 26), featuring six projections and short films from the everyday life of handicapped, amputated people, a theme which has long concerned him. His 20 minute silent film “Glimpse” (2016/17, Ill. 27) can be seen in Athens: it documents refugees in the infamous “Calais jungle” (a town of tents that has now been demolished); and in reception camps in Paris and Berlin. The New York Times called the video the most important work in documenta 14.[35]

Visitors can view a 14-channel video installation by Michel Auder (*1945 Soissons, Ill. 28a-c), entitled “The Course of Empire” (2017), on the bed of an old track in a disused underground railway station containing posters, passenger information, graffiti and escalators from the time it was closed down in 2005. The installation shows writings and art works from the 18th and 19th century by people like Alexander von Humboldt and Arthur Rimbaud, as imperialist and colonialist documents and contrasts them with contemporary films. Anyone wanting information on the works of other artists is referred to Internet research results and press reports, since the curators clearly lacked the necessary knowledge when they were working on their “Daybook”. Thus it is possible to find out more about the Kurdish-Iraqi artist Hiwa K who now lives in Berlin (*1975 Sulaimaniyya, Ill. 29), and who exhibits a cube of single sewage pipes containing small living quarters in a prominent place in front of the Documenta-Halle. Here the press informs us that on his flight through Greece the artist had slept for months in empty sewage pipes containing living quarters set up by refugees. A “living-room” installation consisting of stoneware pipes entitled “When We Were Exhaling Images“ (2017) was assembled by students from the product design course at the Kassel Academy of Art.[36]