Hans Haacke’s provocative artworks in Frankfurt’s Schirn | EUROtoday

Was hat der seit den ausgehenden Fünfzigerjahren immer politisch agierende Konzeptkünstler Hans Haacke eigentlich nicht vorweggenommen? Mit seinen Untersuchungen von Kreisläufen und Parallelisierungen von sozialen Systemen und Ordnungen in Ameisenstaaten und menschlichen Gesellschaften inspirierte er bis heute zahllose Künstler. Diese quasi soziologischen Forschungen, die aber immer so sinnlich wie anschaulich aufbereitet sind, schafften es früh ins Museum.

Im Jahr 1971 deckte er in seiner Serie „Shapolsky und Co.“ die systematische Vernichtung von bezahlbarem Wohnraum in New York durch verdeckten Ankauf und Abriss von Altbauten durch den Immobilienmakler Harry Shapolsky und siebzig Familienangehörige und Freunde als Strohmänner auf. In kurzer Zeit gehörte dem Imperium aus verschwippten Hausaufkäufern ein beträchtlicher Teil Manhattans, alle klandestin erworbenen Gebäude hat Haacke lakonisch im Stil der mit ihm befreundeten Bechers fotografiert.

Im Grunde scheinen derartige unsichtbare, nur durch Recherche und akri­bische Dokumentation sichtbar gemachte Immobilienhändel als Kunst nicht darstellbar. Haacke gelang dennoch schon hier 1971 das Kunststück, über die Namenskolonnen zu beiden Seiten großer Tafeln und die zwischen ihnen gezogenen Verbindungslinien der Häuserkäufe zwischen beiden Lagern links und rechts dem Verwirrspiel die Anmutung eines nicht enden wollenden Flipperspiels des Spätkapitalismus zu verleihen. Jahre später hat ihm diese Arbeit viel Ansehen eingetragen, ursprünglich brachte sie ihm aber kein Glück. Wohl auf Druck des inkriminierten Immobilienhais hin sagte der damalige Direktor des Guggenheim, Thomas Messer, die schon fertige Ausstellung Haackes im Museum sechs Wochen vor der Eröffnung ab.

His work “The Praline Master” from 1981 introduced the Cologne chocolate mogul and main artwork collector Peter Ludwig equally little pleasure. Once once more, Haacke spent months researching the producer’s non-chocolate pages and located tyrannical therapy of staff, doubtful purchases and gross sales of artwork (akin to that of the medieval manuscripts to the Getty Center) and unscrupulous enterprise practices. The creative packaging of those unsavory undersides of the artwork patron, then again, is aesthetic: the entrepreneur’s sobering felony story is offered like fairy tales in kids’s books in elegant frames, with the unflattering texts rigorously organized and on the backside of actual opened chocolate bins and chocolate wrappers like vignettes in useful Renaissance folios be accomplished.

And lengthy earlier than the unsavory nature of the various restitution work of the German-Swiss arms seller Bührle, which had been acquired from former Jewish property, had been researched and documented within the Kunsthaus Zurich by the director of the German Historical Museum, Raphael Gross, Haacke had already advised the soiled story of this in his 1985 work “Buhrlesque”. Company uncovered, proper as much as the best South African award, which went unnoticed by virtually everybody, to Bührle for the loyal arms provider and supporter of the apartheid regime.

Drawing on Duchamp, Haacke could be seen as an innovator of institutional criticism. Since the eighties on the newest, he has now not shied away from direct assaults on large names: Hilmar Kopper is quoted within the work “Site Culture” about globally celebrated artwork patrons with the malicious sentence: “Whoever gives the money controls”; the opposite statements, all opposite to the general public picture, aren’t a lot friendlier.

At Documenta 8, one in all many wherein he was concerned, Haacke displayed the sharp reckoning with Deutsche Bank within the type of its emblem with the glowing Mercedes star above it, signaling the 2 mega-corporations’ unholy alliance. In 1987, this was perceived by many as a daring boyish piece.

For Haacke, change is the one factor that lasts Stasis probably deadly; Minimal artwork subsequently appeared downright harmful to him as a result of its works, like Donald Judd’s sterile aluminum bins, deny change. “The status quo is an illusion – a dangerous one in political terms,” as he as soon as identified.

Perhaps it is best to take a look at the room with the early works on the entrance to the exhibition anti-cyclically on the finish and subsequently the final work “The Population”, his initially extremely controversial earth basin within the Berlin Reichstag from 2000, first. The heated debates within the Bundestag in regards to the work could be seen on screens on the left wall, and within the center the event of the big pool over virtually 1 / 4 of a century could be seen in quick movement.

While the members of the Bundestag had been initially very hesitant to carry soil from their respective electoral districts within the baggage offered, the political land artwork quickly crammed up and in the present day the basin is populated with an astonishing number of vegetation from all federal states: On the suitable wall are macro photographs photographed by Haacke The numerous flora could be seen from small crops on the Red List to chestnut timber. Soon the 1.20 meter excessive letters will likely be overgrown; But since Brecht’s sentence “Anyone who says population instead of people in our time doesn’t support many lies” is already an necessary reference for the artist, the disappearance of the letters on this numerous German forest of leaves ought to hardly damage him.

At its core, nonetheless, “The Population” is already unfolded in “Grass Grows” from 1965 within the shiny entrance corridor, a grassy cone of earth within the inside, which for Haacke was the mannequin for bodily progress and alternate processes in addition to for the alternate of power, as he did in lots of different installations with water in bodily states akin to ice, mist or blood circulation.

How present Haacke’s works stay is demonstrated by the information ticker “News” within the exhibition, which spews out countless info floods of paper ; particularly within the monumental bronze “Gift Horse” from 2014.

Designed on the time for the so-called fourth plinth of London’s Trafalgar Square as a boneless Trojan horse of King William IV and a touch upon his infatuation with the horse footage of George Stubbs (which had been significantly costlier than slaves), it ran over a steel loop on the bony one The horse’s chest initially contained the information from the London Stock Exchange in an countless loop – within the Schirn it’s now that of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. When Trump’s election victory was sure the day earlier than the opening of the exhibition, the costs of all firms affiliated with the USA shot up.

And who is aware of, perhaps Haacke is even the inventor and non secular father of the lava lamps of the seventies, as he had already designed a glass cylinder in 1965 in “Column with two immiscible liquids” that’s really turned over throughout excursions in order that blue liquid diffuses into water a psychedelic, summary impact outcomes. It would not be shocking given Haacke’s many novelties on this charming exhibition as a vivid historical past lesson on the human situation.

Hans Haacke. Retrospective. Schirn Frankfurt, till February 9, 2025. The catalog prices 39 euros.