Anselm Kiefer @ White Cube Gallery London England
Posted: Thu Mar 24, 2011 1:58 pmWC and AK have been crap recently, one crassly emptily commercial and not even sexy, the other overblown used up samo, exchange epithets as you will.
But lo and behold let there be light. Or as in the cube, turn the lights off, and let the painting glow through the murk of spring daylight filtered through skylights.
The one painting here is beautiful. A big toy sub made of wonky lead hangs on the front surface of the painting, also is under the sea of crusty salt and paint, is under the sea, over the painting. Kiefer has triumphantly made a painting that draws you into its suspension, makes you feel all that poetic shit and the sea and the past, and leaves you gawping and wondering how the magic is created. The light is so right, and the supplementaries, a bit cliched (the underside of poetry) help the mood, despite their forceps and gynaey briney rhymes, and even a woman yacking on her cellphone doesnt break the mood, the spell.
To be bewitched by a contemporary painting, what hope, what joy. Like spring sunshine in London.
But lo and behold let there be light. Or as in the cube, turn the lights off, and let the painting glow through the murk of spring daylight filtered through skylights.
The one painting here is beautiful. A big toy sub made of wonky lead hangs on the front surface of the painting, also is under the sea of crusty salt and paint, is under the sea, over the painting. Kiefer has triumphantly made a painting that draws you into its suspension, makes you feel all that poetic shit and the sea and the past, and leaves you gawping and wondering how the magic is created. The light is so right, and the supplementaries, a bit cliched (the underside of poetry) help the mood, despite their forceps and gynaey briney rhymes, and even a woman yacking on her cellphone doesnt break the mood, the spell.
To be bewitched by a contemporary painting, what hope, what joy. Like spring sunshine in London.
