The Buchmann Galerie presents an exhibition with a new series of large-scale photographs by Anna & Bernhard Blume, on view 4 November, 2011 – 14, January, 2012.
Anna & Bernhard Blume Aktionsmetaphern, 2011 Installation view Buchmann Galerie
TRANS-SKULPTUR is the latest group of works realized together by the husband-and wife artists; sadly, it will also be the last one, since Bernhard Blume died unexpectedly several weeks ago.
As its title suggests, TRANS-SKULPTUR treats concepts of space, sculpture, and transcendence, in the humorous, ironic, and philosophical way so typical of the two artists.
TRANS-SKULPTUR was created as part of a staged performance by Anna & Bernhard Blume. They wrote the following statement about TRANS-SKULPTUR:
TRANS-SKULPTUR
Transcendence—how is it articulated today, at the “end of the grand narratives,” after the end of metaphysics? Is there perhaps still today for sentimental references to something somehow completely different and beyond?
In our time, transcendence is essentially a private matter … and perhaps it is more likely to take us to a gallery or museum than to a house of God.
How can we appease our inclination to transcendence today? If not through religion and philosophy, then perhaps through art? The early production of transcendentally inclined images—icons, for example—was still linked to prayer.
What rules, commandments, or prayers guide us, the so-called art photographers Anna & Bernhard Blume, in times of aesthetic disorientation and overproduction? What art in general and for us in particular has to hold on to can be easily specified, but it is less easily done.
It—art—should be of a nature that, on the one hand, evades metaphysical and ideological illusions but, on the other hand, does not forget or betray work on transcendence.
The answer to everything different and specific, for example, to medium, method, material, body and sculpture, to form and content, to meaning, significance … in short, to transcendence and its possible traces …
That answer is ultimately left to you—as the viewer—and only you can be experience it through the senses. So judge or laugh as you wish.
Anna & Bernhard Blume, Summer 2011
