Daniel Barnes explores the conceptual complexities of Anselm Kiefer's latest solo show at White Cube, Hoxton Square.
Anselm Kiefer returns to White Cube with an exceptionally dark and mystifying show. The exhibition’s title means ‘The Waves of Sea and Love’ and is derived from a nineteenth century retelling of the Greek myth of Hero, whose lover drowned one night when swimming the Hellespont to be with her. Kiefer uses this to explore his obsession with history and myth in his unique style, consisting of sumptuous materiality and baffling layers of meaning.
The ground floor gallery features three large works, and five smaller works in display cases. Upstairs is a single work, which is much smaller in scale and is divided into several panels. Kiefer uses a by now familiar range of media: heavily embellished photographs, canvases with thick layers of paint and protruding objects, and meticulously composed books.
The centrepiece of the show is the two works titled Des Meeres und der Liebe Wellen. Each is comprised of twelve panels, with each panel being over three metres wide and a metre deep. They're photographs of seascapes which have been transformed through avariety of methods, including electrolysis. The tremendous scale of these works evokes the awe-inspiring expanse of the ocean itself, while simultaneously capturing the rolling waves and arresting their motion. Kiefer’s use of his materials brilliantly evokes the sea as both a terrifying mystery and thing of great beauty, giving a palpable sense of its motion and power.
The book works explore the futile obsession with mapping and measuring as an attempt to tame nature, by superimposing mathematical formulae on to seascapes. As ever, the books are immaculately crafted; they stand in contrast to the large works with their delicacy in form and subtlety of expression. They also bring humour to an otherwise very serious exhibition with titles like Störe meine Kreise nicht, meaning something like ‘do not disturb my circles’.
The myth of Hero allows Kiefer to infuse these works with existential questions. For example, the multiple panels of I hold all the Indias in my hand depict a man swimming, sometimes joyfully and sometimes battling the tide, seemingly constructing a narrative of his journey. Here we see echoes of Hero’s devoted lover fighting the elements, which draws an analogy between the motions of the sea and the irrepressible progress of love. The sea, in Kiefer’s hands, almost becomes a metaphor for the existential anxiety that engulfs the desperate lover.
This exhibition is extremely dense in both its complex materiality and the layers of ideas derived from mythology, mathematics and poetry, so it can be hard work unpacking the meanings of the images. On a purely aesthetic level, the works have been rendered with such skill that they are a pleasure to look at. But if you want to understand the ideas Kiefer is dealing with, then you should familiarise yourself with the stories he's referring to, since these splendid images are replete with obscure notions. But we should expect nothing less from Kiefer, who has once again proved his worth as a master of making beautiful art out of all that is dark in the human condition.
Anselm Kiefer - Des Meeres und der Liebe Wellen is at White Cube until 9th April 2011.
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