Joan Jonas can’t be stopped
The American artist Joan Jonas
Quelle: Europa Press via Getty Images/Europa Press Entertainment
Four years ago, Okwui Enwezor was unexpectedly dismissed from the Haus der Kunst in Munich, and he died a short time later. His exhibition on the feminist Joan Jonas was canceled – and Markus Lüpertz came. Now it should finally take place. But something is still missing.
Okwui Enwezor was surprisingly relieved of his position as director of the Haus der Kunst in Munich in 2018 after seven years. Using frighteningly ignorant arguments: He doesn’t speak German, does internationally well-respected exhibitions, but has rather little resonance with the Bavarian public, everything is far too expensive, he himself is always on the go – and more like that.
As a result, Bernhard Spies, the interim occupied, Rhenish and also otherwise extremely traditional and tear-resistant network with the art manager Walter Smerling, hastened to do everything differently. Without further ado, he canceled Joan Jonas’ first comprehensive retrospective in Germany, which had already been agreed and was in preparation. Instead of spatial installations, videos and performative works by the now 85-year-old American, there were paintings by Jörg Immendorf and Markus Lüpertz.
Andrea Lissoni has been in charge of Haus der Kunst since 2020. Defying all odds, he brings the works of the avant-garde artist to Munich (from September 9). Also because of the persistently tense financial situation of his house, he organized a charity auction together with the association Friends House of Art, the proceeds of which benefited the Joan Jonas exhibition. Dirk Boll, Christie’s Vice President of 20th and 21st Century Art, will be the auctioneer at the Haus der Kunst auction on July 27th.
Andrea Lissoni is director at the Haus der Kunst in Munich
Source: dpa-infocom GmbH
Among the 35 lots donated by collectors, artists and gallery owners for this purpose is one of the mysterious works by Hans Op de Beeck, the free, universally thinking and working Flemish artist: His watercolors, which he always creates at night, are huge and, at all poetic mood, gloomy. His immersive installations tell stories with no end. “The Collector’s House”, for example, is mystical and disturbing. The walk-in, monochrome gray spatial sculpture was on view a few years ago in the Unlimited exhibition at the Art Basel art fair.
House of Art auctions art
Op de Beeck’s videos, on the other hand, turn to the dramatic, theatrical aspects of life, saturated in color: slowly, calmly, accompanied by his sometimes solemn musical compositions. It was almost inevitable that this indispensable feeling for movement, scenic logic, time and space led him to turn to opera, to design stage sets and also to direct.
Hans Op de Beeck’s wall installation “Family 2” is now on offer at the Munich auction. It is called at an estimate of 15,000 euros. The work is a one and a half meter wide wardrobe hung with everyday utensils and clothes of obviously different people.
Installation „Family 2“ by Hans Op de Beeck
Source: Hans Op de Beeck/VG Bildkunst, Bonn 2022
So far, so banal. You know this arrangement in a very similar way from any apartment. But what kind of people are the owners of these things here? Unfathomable. Because Op de Beeck’s things are covered with black velour, making them invisible.
Is it the wardrobe rack of a nerve-racking nice family, a chaotic bunch, a boring middle-class idyll? And why on earth are the garments covered in the first place?
In an interview, the artist said his “main source of inspiration is everyday life with its obstacles, is an uneasiness accentuated by moments of beauty and emotion. The starting point for my reflections on the universal questions of our tragicomic existence,” says Op de Beeck, “are the small, supposedly meaningless things.” No sooner have we succumbed to his metaphorical, always a bit uncanny art of seduction, of course we remain alone and still have to move on : with fantasy and always a bit melancholic.