Kremser Kunsthalle exhibits retrospective of Anna and Bernhard Blumes | EUROtoday

Ein Paar auf einem Waldweg, sie im großformatig geblümten, ärmellosen Sommerkleid, er, schon ziemlich kahl, mit dunkler Hose und hellkariertem Jackett, in der Linken die Handtasche der Gattin. Beide intestine gelaunt. Im zweiten Bild steht die Frau feixend zwischen von Windbruch zersplitterten Fichten, die rechte Hand am Stamm. Das letzte Bild zeigt die beiden aus größerer Distanz unter einem in der Mitte geknickten Baum, der sich wie ein großes „N“ als Diagonale von links oben durch das Bild schiebt. Schwarz-weiße Großformate, zwei Meter hoch, 1,26 Meter breit: Das deutsche Künstlerehepaar Anna (1936 bis 2020) und Bernhard Blume (1937 bis 2011) bei der Inszenierungsarbeit.

Dem Documenta-Teilnehmer Bernhard Blume gesellte sich seine Frau Anna ab den Achtzigern gleichberechtigt und symbiotisch hinzu. Das Paar hatte sich beim Studium an der Staatlichen Kunstakademie Düsseldorf kennengelernt, später arbeiteten beide als Gymnasiallehrer und schufen doch Größeres als Kunsterzieherkunst: Spezialisiert auf Performance, die in Serien festgehalten und selbst entwickelt wurde, ist die Kamera der Blumes auf die kleinbürgerliche Welt gerichtet.

But the sweet home turns out to be unfathomable. In the eight-part series “Mahlzeit” (1985/86) you may see the Blumes in blurred pictures as if gagged with a Styrofoam dice of their mouths. The title of the work can also be fabricated from polystyrene letters, and there may be clearly not a lot enthusiasm in regards to the plastic meals – Bernhard Blume spits out the onerous foam elements in a large arc. In “Kitchen Fever” from the identical 12 months, Anna Blume juggles dozens of potatoes and a colander till she and the kitchen chair tip over backwards. The motion, you need to bear in mind, will not be captured in lots of of pictures per minute like right this moment’s cameras, however reasonably analogue. This requires nice technical talent. “Wahnzimmer” (1984), “Trautes” Heim” (1986), “Vase Ecstasy” (1987) – the Blumes’ world is turned the wrong way up, stacked furnishings, cups and plates fall to the ground, whereas Anna Blume falls diagonally towards the wall appears to drift, hangs the wrong way up from the ceiling or performs weird leaps. It’s brilliantly staged, and it is fairly humorous.

Role clichés of the serving housewife are subverted in addition to these of the grasp of the home; each companions seem united in holy non-seriousness. Completely completely different from Bernd and Hilla Becher, who’re virtually the identical age, the Blumes don’t succeed with self-discipline and strict formality, however reasonably seize the viewer with playful anarchy. Who would not endure from a scarcity of self-confidence. The exhibition organized by Andreas Hoffer within the halls of the previous Krems tobacco manufacturing unit actually scores factors with its grand gestures. The significance of the laboratory work again then for the profitable creation of the images must be defined once more right this moment, says the curator.

The Blumes’ dialogue of constructivism additionally takes up some area, as does Anna Blume’s feminist criticism of the normal male dominance of the artwork world. In the sequence “The Pure Sensation” (1990/91) she works on key figures of modernism comparable to Kandinsky, Mondrian and Malevich, juxtaposing their art-theoretical verdicts with photorealistic drawings of ladies’s our bodies which are in garments which have modernist motifs comparable to Square, line, triangle and diamond are printed.

In the Polaroid sequence “Mutual” the Blumes acquire, amongst different issues, weird objects from the world of promoting, from detergents to toothpaste. The engagement with summary artwork, as featured within the sequence “Fugitive Suprematist” (2002), additionally marks the flip to digital images after the flip of the millennium. You can see it within the photos. Finally, the present exhibits “In the Forest” (1987–1991), the quintessential German theme. In 22 giant codecs, Anna and Bernhard Blume grasp from branches, kneel in entrance of trunks, are trapped or fall to the bottom in free fall. Across the road, abandoned and, for as soon as, utterly with none unusual bulges, hangs the twelve-part deadwood mountain vary “Auf der Schwarzwaldhöhe II” (1985), a beacon from the years when the Germans have been disturbed by the dying forests. The Karlsruhe photographer Gabriele Engelhardt, born in 1967, devotes herself to a different, supposedly exhausted subject in artwork historical past. During the Corona pandemic in 2022, she spent two months touring in Krems and the encompassing space as a Kunsthalle scholarship holder. To the east of the town she encountered mountains that solely have a brief lifespan. They usually are not fabricated from lime or granite, however of metal scrap, sheet steel stamping waste, wooden chips, slag, plastic waste from agriculture, and supplies which are recycled for secondary industrial use. They infrequently cease for for much longer than a day.

In massifs of recyclables: Engelhardt places collectively a big picture from 1000’s of particular person pictures in central perspective, which she takes along with her medium format digicam, during which each element shines. She compares the method to modeling by a sculptor, a topic she studied. Getting entry to the recycling firms was not simple; there was little interest in the general public there. There is nothing manipulated about her photos, they’re very collaged. A associated sequence was beforehand created in Kehl am Rhein. Ten of those quiet giant codecs and a tableau of sixteen smaller images shall be proven in Krems. They add a subversive perspective from the Anthropocene to the mountain picture style – highway salt glows mysteriously like an iceberg. But because the icebergs soften, the plastic mountains develop.

Anna & Bernhard Blume. Complicity (A=B) and Gabriele Engelhardt. Krems Mountains. Kunsthalle Krems, till March 16, 2025. The catalogs value 29.90 and 34 euros.