Three Descriptions of Absence

Framing the Absent

Cyntia Lahti is an Alchemist. With her hands and her imagination she readies figures for the fire. After a period of time when all she can do is hope that this process of transformative fire accepts her experiments in form, space, color and light. Fire, it seems loves her as much as she loves it, and her work, her offerings are given back to her as marvels of this magic. Like the alchemists of old, what once was visible has vanished and what once could not be seen dazzles like an incantation before the viewer.

For over thirty years Cynthia’s work has always taken the human form as its subject, but whereas much representative work begins and ends with this form, our bodies, her work materially and essentially lays bare the contradictions that our form exists within, and that exist within us. Many of her figures can be seen in a position of vulnerability or pain, yet seldom are they depicted as suffering, instead appearing to be in a profound state of peace or even ecstatic. Glorified they are not, luminous they are.

In the series, Vault Alarm, fragments of the human body exist only to describe what is not there. A pair of hands resting upon a knee in some way gives both form and reason to what is not there, the rest of the body. Elsewhere I remember seeing figures Cynthia had once made of glass. They were dresses posed by absent bodies, carefully reflecting light from their own emptiness. More recently she made a series titled, Nurse. One of these figures has the entire back of the woman removed, inside her body she is a soft rose color, the stand for the sculpture itself has replaced the woman’s spine. Another beautiful piece sees two figures in an embrace, the fronts of their bodies colored also in a rose that could be coming from love as much as from blood that warms the body. The title, Nurse tells us that it could be both love and blood. Compassion. 

Fashion is important to her work as well. While their bodies might often seem compromised and their spirits in a state of grace, they are often seen wearing glamorous clothing; long gloves, the full, formal skirts of the 1950s or chic raingear from the mid 1960s. What the subjects are wearing when considering their poses, what they seem to be doing, as well as the state of their completeness comments on nostalgia. The gaiety of these fashions could be seen as a longing for something that never has been.

If identifying with her beatific forms comes easy, it is because Cynthia shows them as both welcoming and normal. By this I mean that it is their world that is central. It is ours where they become marginalized, or victimized. Existing in fragments, being opened up, or made out of absence does not solicit from our gaze pity or sorrow, but in giving yourself to them, a sort of healing can commence.

Essays between Eye, Ear, Text and Brush. On Replay.

 miscellanea, by Heinz Emigholz

A film can be seen not as an object; a spool of celluloid, heavy in hands, wound onto a reel, but a film can also be seen as a duration of time where various fragments related to a certain theme come together, presenting themselves in succession that form a unified whole. When the film is over, this duration of time spent, these fragments settle into the soft matter of our minds, often merging with our own memories, and then becoming something unique from the original film itself. Just as a film can be these fragments carefully pieced together, in the making of a film several fragments are left out, either not willing to participate, or demanding fuller attention and exploration at another time.

Recently I have watched a film I had seen earlier this year at the Berlinale, and was so moved by that I could not finish watching it. This happens to me sometimes when a piece of art rushes into me with an exhilarating speed, as if it has found me after a long time. A memory that I did not know I had that knows it has found a home, a person to whom it belongs. This film is called, A Series of Thoughts, by Heinz Emigholz. Now on DVD, I could watch it at home, pausing now and again to let the fragments settle, to find their place inside me.

The film itself exists from fragments that often came from other films made by Emighoz, that here he has expanded or developed into this amazing film. It gets to me for several reasons. One of them is my own interest in Architecture. Segments of this film are studies of buildings without comment, letting the stone, brick and glass tell their own poetry. Absent from these images are also people. The buildings can be seen as headstones that mark previous eras and times, and contain the residue of tales, now reduced to a quiet murmuring, to a feeling. There is also the feeling of a road trip to this series of thoughts, coming from many places the film maker has visited. One gets the feeling not of a post card, but actual and real memory. The places we see in this film seem to stand as they would in our minds when recalling certain places.

Parts of this film that do have commentary are wonderfully unique. El Greco in Toledo examines both a painting by El Greco, but also the history of the city through that painting, and through the design of the city. The way that Emigholz pulls the story out of the painting we see in a museum shows us how to look at art itself. Removed from discussions about painting and form, we are taken back to a historical incident, placed there as witness. It reminds me of the skill wielded by W.G. Sebald in a passage he wrote about a painting where a criminal is dissected. What we end up seeing is a crime. The sadness and weight of the historical is often buried under heaps of paintings, masquerading as art safely hung on walls. In searching carefully the face of power, we are taught to see and hear its victims. Heinz Emigholz teaches us how to speak with ghosts.

Another segment titled Leonardo’s Tears shows us endless perspectives of a football game set to a tragic tale of an unlikely father and son. Seemingly by chance does this relationship happen, and also by chance at times the image synchs with the text, and we are not watching a football game, but a gripping melodrama, the players transformed into actors transformed into the subjects whose story they tell. In the accompanying booklet this text is described as a collage. More fragments recombined eternally into tales of loss, tales of desire, tales of humanity.

This series, Miscellanea I-VII is a sad and inspiring work, taking us through the grand heights of our achievements and into the darkness of our failures, it neither exalts or diminishes us humans. We simply are existing in the contradictions we house and multiply. This DVD is put out by Filmgalerie 451. Thank you Heinz.

Torn, from One Journal to the Next

One of the most important tasks of the artist is to honestly and accurately describe; I was here, with these people. The stuff of our lives is so crammed with memories, events, people, and the artist takes the debris of these fragments and makes things that tell alternate versions of history, of life and of time. Artists Wilhelm Hein and Annette Frick have been presenting life and time here in Berlin for several years in many forms; films, paintings, photography, writings. One thing they produce is an irregular journal consisting of photographs and texts that are arranged around certain events. The most recent two volumes of Jenseits Der Trampelpfade were centered around the Jack Smith retrospective, and commissioning of new work, Live Film. Curated by Stefanie Schulte Strathaus, Marc Siegel and Susanne Saschsse, this was a massive event that brought three generations of underground artists, performers and scholars to take a fresh look at the work of the late, great, Jack Smith.

Both Hein and Frick have made this journal a work of love that shows artistic practice and life in Berlin in all its complexity from a very personal perspective. Taking the format of the Zine, these books are delightful documents of life, of what art means and what community can be. Utopian in nature, they make the statement, “I was Here”, not in some circle of the famous or infamous, but in the larger sense of life and living. Each book is specific to the time it took to make it, many of the photos taken by Frick herself, and many have accompanying texts collected by Hein. Fragments of letters and e-mails, manifestos, reviews, obituaries. Often there is also a DVD or CD with a great audio piece, or short film. The Smith centered issues are full of photographs of Mario Montez, the superstar to both Warhol and Smith that were taken on Mario’s recent visits to this city. That both Hein and Frick are committed to an underground means that these moments are contextualized in an aesthetic that is political. In these times of art as career, of institutional darlings and pets, these books are refreshing reminders of just what art can be and mean.