[spectre] New York exhibition by Wolfgang Staehle

[Andreas Broeckmann]

[Wolfgang Staehle of The Thing has an exhibition at Postmaster's in New
York at the moment in which he projects live web-cam images from different
locations in the world; one view of the Berlin TV tower is taken from the
Podewil, another is a large panorama view of Lower Manhattan from Staehle's
loft in Brooklyn; the show opened on 6 September - below is an article that
describes the eerie timeliness that it then suddenly had ...; what I liked
about the idea of the show was the conception of a live-still image
projected as though it was, well, not a painting, but something static in
the tradition of image-making; it now seems ironic that the choice of the
motifs - symbolically loaded pieces of architecture - proved far more
transitory than intended. The show stays open till 6 Oct.
(http://dks.thing.net/WolfgangStaehle.html); abroeck]


From: wolfgangsta@thing.net
Subject: NYTimes.com Article: In New York's Galleries, a New Context Seems
to Remake the Art
Date: Wed, 19 Sep 2001 14:10:52 -0400 (EDT)

\----------------------------------------------------------/

In New York's Galleries, a New Context Seems to Remake the Art

By ROBERTA SMITH



The effects of the shattering tragedy on Sept. 11 will undoubtedly
be seen in contemporary art in the not-so-distant future. But it
has already created, virtually overnight, a new category of
outsider art: the astounding impromptu shrines and individual
artworks that have proliferated along New York's streets and in its
parks and squares.

 Alternating missing-person posters with candles, flowers, flags,
drawings and messages of all kinds, these accumulations bring home
the enormity of the tragedy in tangles of personal detail. They
have also brought to its broadest expression yet the 20-year-long
democratization of memorials that began with the Viet Nam Memorial,
with its naming of names. The trend continued in the AIDS quilt,
with its handmade images and mementos, and reached a peak of public
participation with the oceanic expanses of flowers amassed in front
of St. James's Palace after the death of Diana, Princess of Wales.

 Still, certain works of art already on view in New York galleries
registered the change unexpectedly simply because the tragedy gave
everything, art as well as life, a radically different context. In
ways sometimes symbolic, and in one case literal, they looked
different, and meant something different, too.

 Sometimes it was pure, desperate projection. Ten days ago the big
grisaille image of President Bush's face that was included in the
show of Richard Phillips's lurid new paintings at the Friedrich
Petzel Gallery in Chelsea looked vapid and slightly sarcastic. But
now, in the city that was the capital of the blue country on the
post-election voting map, the painting was suddenly devoid of irony
and more animated, perhaps because one looked at it harder, with a
greater sense of familiarity. One could read dignity and
monumentality into it, as if it were a mockup for a carving on
Mount Rushmore, and see the deep magenta panels flanking the face
as an attempt to mix red and blue.

 There was at least one instance of art predicting life. At the
Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery on West 26th Street, in a show that opened
Sept. 8, Nancy Davenport unveiled "The Apartments," a series of
simulated photographs made over the last three years that depicted
terrorists, alternately sinister and comic, lurking on the roofs
and balconies of anonymous New York apartment buildings. (They were
actually images of the artist's friends photographed in a studio
and then inserted into the pictures of buildings on the computer.)

 While convincingly done, before that Tuesday the images would have
been little more than a wrinkle in the history of setup
photography; until then, they depicted what most Americans
considered an impossibility. Now they seem horribly real. Ms.
Davenport said she intended the images to be neither humorous nor
an explicit warning. But, she said, "I was aware of the fact that
it could happen here, and of the incredible innocence of this
country, which I share." The artist and her dealer debated whether
to take the show down. It is open again.

 By far the eeriest, most affecting coincidence can be seen in a
show at Postmasters Gallery on West 19th Street. The first show in
10 years by Wolfgang Staehle, a German artist who has lived in New
York since 1976, it opened on Sept. 6 and contains three live- feed
video projection pieces. The centerpiece is a panoramic view of
Lower Manhattan measuring 9 by 22 feet, which is transmitted to the
gallery from two cameras facing south from the window of a loft in
the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn.

 On the Saturday before that Tuesday, it offered a sweeping,
postcard-perfect view of the southern third of Manhattan and its
skyline and the East River and its bridges, with the twin towers
reaching almost to the upper edge of the image. Mr. Staehle had
titled the piece "To the People of New York" and said he intended
it as a kind of contemporary landscape painting, one using the
latest technology and showing the world simply as it is, in real
time. (The effect is of real time slowed down: the cameras transmit
an image every four seconds, so that, for example, boats move up
and down the river in short spurts.)

 It was a beautiful awe-inspiring sight, and people entering the
gallery on that first Saturday tended to be struck silent by its
grandeur, mundanity and simple conjuring of the ceaselessness of
time, light and life. In the two other works, time unfolds in other
parts of the world with a similar quietude, adding the resonance of
simultaneity. One shows a 50-year-old communications tower in the
eastern section of Berlin, a tall, gangly structure that looks dark
and ominous during the day and turns into a sparkling
chandelier-like bauble at night. The other is a 15th-century
monastery perched majestically on a hilltop in an area of Germany
near Munich where Mr. Staehle grew up.

 Shortly after 9 a.m. on Sept. 11, Mr. Staehle, who was watching
the terrorist attack from the roof of his apartment building on
Ludlow Street, called Magda Sawon, the owner of Postmasters, who
lives behind the gallery with her family. He told her what was
happening and to turn on the Manhattan projection. Ms. Sawon did
so, and with her son at school and her husband in Los Angeles, she
stood alone in the big darkened gallery and watched the collapse of
the buildings, unlike most people, in total silence. The towers
came down in real time and chilling slow motion, and what was
intended as a form of contemporary landscape painting became a
living history painting, a picture of history in the making.

 Last Saturday, all three projection pieces were still in operation
and the people looking at them were more silent than ever. The
images of the Berlin tower and the German monastery stood unchanged
in the slowly shifting light, offering proof of life going on. The
majestic view of Manhattan offered similar proof except that the
skyline was different and the sky was newly blank, and Mr. Staehle
had changed the name of the work to "Untitled."

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/19/arts/design/19POST.html?ex=1001923051&ei=1&en=
2287e1ff332224f1

/-----------------------------------------------------------------\

\-----------------------------------------------------------------/

HOW TO ADVERTISE
---------------------------------
For information on advertising in e-mail newsletters
or other creative advertising opportunities with The
New York Times on the Web, please contact Alyson
Racer at alyson@nytimes.com or visit our online media
kit at http://www.nytimes.com/adinfo

For general information about NYTimes.com, write to
help@nytimes.com.

Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company