Opening Remarks
I’m very honoured to be invited to say a few words on their work.
Here at the Himalayas Art Museum they have installed some of their most recent pieces, some of which I have not yet seen in this form before. While wandering through the different spaces of the exhibition this afternoon, I became more and more aware of a specific approach which links all their works, both in photography and in film. It is about time—and this specific approach to time makes sense only when taking into account the presence of an organism, or organisms. In their art, Ruth Anderwald + Leonhard Grond share their experience of being human organisms, with all the associated possibilities of perception—constantly intermingling, confusing, writing over what we may call the exterior world with a presence that is both physical and interior.
Thus, when I see their Atlases (2008–2010), I not only experience this one photographic moment in this one picture hanging in front of me in the gallery—hanging there with the people, among them myself, hanging in the picture; I am also made to feel how the time of their being in the air can be kept going—by holding it inside with the intensity of a perception linked to the memory of my own human body—which, in its orientation or disorientation, is in itself a projected memory, one of many imagination or dream shapes.
In their work there is, again and again, an abandoning to the ungraspable thing which we call »the moment«: this short yet complete span of time proper to experience. And an abandoning to uncertainty—to the awesome and unclassifiable qualities of perception when it is yet untouched by the structuring power of language.
We see in their work the admirable, fluid collaboration between two artists. The simple fact that a camera is frequently being handed over from one of them to the other—no matter who is first or second—is highly significant. They not only share each other’s daily lives, as those who have spent some time with them know; what is more astonishing is that they also share the extraordinary moments of their life as artists, in the sense that they let themselves be elated and carried away as artists together. From there originates the almost impersonal transparency of some of their images—and this may sound like a contradiction—even if these are marked by a bodily presence, a shaking of the image, a blurring, occasional over- or underexposure. These two artists always see—from the beginning—with the other included, and this makes what they see a communal sight: a sight that hovers in between of all of us. In an amazing process of spontaneous editing they bring to life for exhibition those moments they have previously recorded on film. Exactly because they are two, they are used to critical evaluation and appraisal within the working process, leading not to compromise but to a specific contour based on frequent communication. This communication about what is seen, there, in front of them, doesn’t stop in an object that is arrested on film and in the mind once and for all—its infectious life seems to spill over onto us, the viewers: All the works of Ruth Anderwald + Leonhard Grond get us »off the ground« somehow, in that they make us look as human beings, standing upright in a world yet to be experienced. Inevitably, they involve us in an intimate sensation of ourselves—with the time of an organism, with its beating heart, its wandering and jumping gaze, its blinking eyes, with this ongoing overlay of the perceived, the remembered, and the imagined. This is, for me, the »Shattered Horizon«: their exhibition makes me think of the breakthrough that can happen between body and mind.
Congratulations, Ruth and Leonhard for developing this body of work up to the point of this exhibition, here, today.
Here at the Himalayas Art Museum they have installed some of their most recent pieces, some of which I have not yet seen in this form before. While wandering through the different spaces of the exhibition this afternoon, I became more and more aware of a specific approach which links all their works, both in photography and in film. It is about time—and this specific approach to time makes sense only when taking into account the presence of an organism, or organisms. In their art, Ruth Anderwald + Leonhard Grond share their experience of being human organisms, with all the associated possibilities of perception—constantly intermingling, confusing, writing over what we may call the exterior world with a presence that is both physical and interior.
Thus, when I see their Atlases (2008–2010), I not only experience this one photographic moment in this one picture hanging in front of me in the gallery—hanging there with the people, among them myself, hanging in the picture; I am also made to feel how the time of their being in the air can be kept going—by holding it inside with the intensity of a perception linked to the memory of my own human body—which, in its orientation or disorientation, is in itself a projected memory, one of many imagination or dream shapes.
In their work there is, again and again, an abandoning to the ungraspable thing which we call »the moment«: this short yet complete span of time proper to experience. And an abandoning to uncertainty—to the awesome and unclassifiable qualities of perception when it is yet untouched by the structuring power of language.
We see in their work the admirable, fluid collaboration between two artists. The simple fact that a camera is frequently being handed over from one of them to the other—no matter who is first or second—is highly significant. They not only share each other’s daily lives, as those who have spent some time with them know; what is more astonishing is that they also share the extraordinary moments of their life as artists, in the sense that they let themselves be elated and carried away as artists together. From there originates the almost impersonal transparency of some of their images—and this may sound like a contradiction—even if these are marked by a bodily presence, a shaking of the image, a blurring, occasional over- or underexposure. These two artists always see—from the beginning—with the other included, and this makes what they see a communal sight: a sight that hovers in between of all of us. In an amazing process of spontaneous editing they bring to life for exhibition those moments they have previously recorded on film. Exactly because they are two, they are used to critical evaluation and appraisal within the working process, leading not to compromise but to a specific contour based on frequent communication. This communication about what is seen, there, in front of them, doesn’t stop in an object that is arrested on film and in the mind once and for all—its infectious life seems to spill over onto us, the viewers: All the works of Ruth Anderwald + Leonhard Grond get us »off the ground« somehow, in that they make us look as human beings, standing upright in a world yet to be experienced. Inevitably, they involve us in an intimate sensation of ourselves—with the time of an organism, with its beating heart, its wandering and jumping gaze, its blinking eyes, with this ongoing overlay of the perceived, the remembered, and the imagined. This is, for me, the »Shattered Horizon«: their exhibition makes me think of the breakthrough that can happen between body and mind.
Congratulations, Ruth and Leonhard for developing this body of work up to the point of this exhibition, here, today.
Openings remarks by Hannes Schüpbach
English editing: Elizabeth Tucker
Opening of SHATTERED HORIZON: Ruth Anderwald + Leonhard Grond, Sunday 17 Oct 2010, 5pm at Himalayas Art Museum (Zendai MoMA), Fangdian Road 199, Pudong, Shanghai 200135.