The Italian entrepreneur Dino Gavina launched a line of “functional” works of art in 1971. Designs by artists such as Meret Oppenheim, Marcel Duchamp and René Magritte were realized. Marion Baruch also developed two objects: Ron Ron, a spherical black fur stool with a tail, and Lorenz, a carpet-like sleeping bag with rubber eyes. While names like Oppenheim and Magritte are firmly inscribed in art history, the 92-year-old Baruch is – still – unknown to many. It is thanks to the commitment of the Swiss curator Noah Stolz that it is now attracting international attention: the Kunstmuseum Luzern organized its first work exhibition in 2020 and this year it was represented in the Unlimited section at Art Basel.
The gallery of the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig is now showing its first comprehensive exhibition in Germany. As an educational institution, the university and exhibition may remain open in contrast to the museums in the Free State, provided that visitors: inside can provide proof of 2-G-plus.
While the gray sleet fits the Saxon lockdown mood outside, a colorful labyrinth of scraps of fabric greets you inside. Strong red and blue, mint, highlighter yellow, horizontal and vertical stripes condense into a texture under the title Endless going trying to say. In between, paths open up, a choreography is created, executed by the visitors, whose shadows interweave with those of the fabrics on the gallery floor to create a new ephemeral image.
The functional jacket is dripping
The fabric sculptures are based on textile waste from the Milanese prêt-à-porter industry. Baruch gets them home in a garbage bag, sorts the knots according to size, weight, color and type of empty spaces. The cut-out shapes refer to sleeves, skirts or trouser legs, are reminiscent of animal skins and create grimaces in the room. Marion Baruch has been concerned with clothing and its relationship to the body since the 1960s: in 1969 she created a kind of black, geometric garment bag. When carried by a person who becomes a sculpture, form and proportion disappear, which can also be understood as an objection to patriarchal norms of beauty. Baruch herself only wears white and black, she can still perceive strong contrasts despite her poor eyesight. For the most recent work Bomb she cut up her own functional jacket and arranged it as if a viscous liquid were dripping down the wall and Malevich’s Black square want to shape.
In eight small wall showcases made of Plexiglas, further works are presented by means of text and photographs, which mark turning points in their work. Time and again, Baruch has found a contemporary language, shaped by wit and play on words, poetic, ironic, critical. The “idea of form as a container” forms the basis of her work: in the 1960s she produced a transparent ball in which a person can roll through his surroundings. Baruch advertised the prototype in daily newspapers, but it has not been preserved. Anyone who has traveled a lot like her for a lifetime does not have a camp everywhere. A problem that is also due to economic bottlenecks and affects many women artists. Born in Romania in 1929, Baruch studied art in Bucharest and Israel with Bauhaus student Mordecai Ardon. A scholarship took her to Italy in 1954, where she lives again today after stints in Paris and London. She speaks seven languages fluently, including German.
In response to her experiences with the art market, she founded the label “Name Diffusion” in 1990, a company registered in the commercial register, with which she signed her works and involved others in the future. Here the name becomes the container. In the 1990s she realized projects that defied marketing: In a women’s refuge she initiated a fictitious change in the law to free choice of names, and when the “Sans-Papiers” occupied churches in Paris in 1996/97 and went on hunger strike, she accepted many actions and documented. for An empty room she vacates a room in her apartment and invites strangers and acquaintances over with handwritten flyers – without a goal, without a topic.
Institutional criticism, feminism, migration, consumer criticism, exploring the boundaries between art and design – it may also be this heterogeneity that has so far prevented Marion Baruch from being properly present in the art world. An aging computer in Leipzig refers to their interactive network projects, which testify to the idea of being able to reconfigure the social space through the Internet. Next to it is a bed – Baruch’s favorite piece of furniture for working – on it is archive boxes with other materials and photographs. One shows countless labeled cardboard boxes that are piled up in her house and make it clear how much still needs to be systematically processed, art-historically classified and curatorially presented. One wishes for Baruch and the art world that more people can be found as soon as possible who will get involved in this cosmos and preserve their memories for future generations.
Marion Baruch – OFFSET HGB Galerie Leipzig, until January 28, 2022. Curated by Ilse Lafer and Noah Stolz with the support of Dana Diminescu
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