Hein Semke Revisited: "Metamorphoses III"

(Hein Semke, Metamorphoses III, 1971, ceramic mask on hardboard and acrylic glass, donated by Teresa Balté, CAM Collection, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian)

Last year I visited an Art exhibition at Fundação Gulbenkian, and I discovered an artist: Hein Semke. This is another iteration concerning that interaction between this viewer and the artist.

I imagine that an art piece can be inspired by an idea, a story, a situation...It seems to me that it's a problem when artistic production are no more than a good idea, a joke. I don't have anything to do with that aesthetic of supermarket, television, video clip, or funny and noisy ideas:

(Patrick Raynaud, Red-Cupboard, 1979, Acrylic paint on cut-out and articulated wooden parts, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian)

They are artists who try to talk louder than others and I'm not at all interested in such matters: it's only noise and TV aesthetic, that has progressively been extended to all fields. Robert Bresson used to say that television is the school of distraction and I agree with him completely. I'm not the slightest bit interested in this rapid and superficial aesthetic filled with amusing and banal ideas: I need another notion of time, something slower, closer to silence, shadow, pain, beauty and the impossibility of beauty, of suspension of time, solitude, incommunicability. I've already been accused of having "strange tastes". I don't agree...I feel art should be close to man. That's its implicit meaning: art should enable man to become aware of his world, of his physical and mental space, his impotence and his strength, of the shadow of leaves on the wall, of the proximity between life and death. It's also a work of memory and emotion. I see art as a path steered towards human dignity and genuine understanding of my inner needs. I love art produced with reduced resources. Reduction is the path to transcendence, even when  we want to remain very close to the real world. I like to talk about the image, form and space, but above all I like to talk about the human element, which is always the most important aspect, even in impossibility, absurdity and despair.

NB: Both pictures taken by me at Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian in December 2015 in Lisbon.

Hein Semke: "A German in Lisbon" at Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian

The lines of the soldier’s left hand, that almost appear to be wounds. It seems to beckon me to go and meet its author, Hein Semke, who was an almost unknown entity to me. The sense of strangeness came from the juxtaposition of unexpected elements, such as the soldier kneeling. Semke was able to create a kind of world opposed to the world, a contra-world, a world within a world. But it’s difficult to describe this (image of a) sculpture. I’ve never believed in art objects per se, neither am I interested in them. What truly interests me is not their existence as such, their materiality or their presence, but rather everything which involves people’s lives, or their memories, or their future and thus everything which lies beyond their status as art objects. Upon looking at it, I’m left with echoes. 

                                                    (Kameradschaft des Untergangs)

Unfortunately this sculpture was destroyed a long time ago. We are only left with those echoes represented by the picture/image on exhibition (occupying an entire wall). This image on display has a very frontal presence, very self-absorbed, very much closed in upon itself, but it does not have a very palpable existence and therefore it reminds me of everything and everything conjures everything up. But they are only echoes. I stood in front of this man-sized image for a very long period of time. I lost track of time. For me, it was utterly incomprehensible if even it awoke “memories” in me, future or past, or something else.

NB: Pictures taken by me, perambulating the boundaries between Art and Life at Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian in Lisbon.