I‘VE SEEN THINGS YOU PEOPLE WOULDN‘T BELIEVE

 

Installation at Delmes & Zander, Cologne / Video by Johannes Post 

 

I‘VE SEEN THINGS YOU PEOPLE WOULDN‘T BELIEVE   

Alexandru Chira, Albert Leo Peil, George Widener 

(March to April 2021)

RALFS FARBEN_HÜLLENWERK by Lukas Marxt on view at the Videonale in Bonn

Installation View of Ralfs Farben_Hüllenwerk (46:52 min | 3-channel video
installation, mummified dog, helmet, Ytong blocks, tiles, linoleum | 2021)

Ralfs Farben_Hüllenwerk

on view at Videonale in Bonn

from 4.03 until 18.04, 2021

"Ralfs Farben_Hüllenwerk is an immersive multimedia installation by Lukas Marxt and Michael Petri based on the film Ralfs Farben (Ralf's Colors, 2019) by Lukas Marxt. The staging in the exhibition includes objects and digital collages by the protagonist Ralf Lüddemann.

For the 75-minute avant-garde documentary film Ralfs Farben, Marxt worked over a period of five years with Ralf, who is suffering from schizophrenia and lives as a hermit on Lanzarote. The barren dwelling of the mid-fifties man, a former flight instructor, is located near a dam in inhospitable surroundings. Marxt got to know Ralf in 2012, when the filmmaker wanted to face a four-week attempt at isolation on Lanzarote; after a week, he met Ralf, and from then on the fascination for his thought cosmos determined his own work. In the course of the filming in 2017, Michael Petri joined the team as an artistic ›collaborator‹, who also brought a creative counterweight to the constellation of Marxt/Ralf. The content level of the film is dominated by Ralf's statements as voice over and sometimes as text insertions on the film images. The combination of the unfiltered monologues shaped by Ralf's thought constructs with long, aestheticizing long shots creates unusual visual and linguistic poetry and raises both the protagonist's statements and the filmed motifs to a fascinating new level. On a further level, digital collages created by Ralf Lüddemann with MS Paint, so-called ›Tagesschlüssel‹ (Day Keys), and the sound design, a collage of wind noise, electronic score by Marcus Zilz and flute playing, are incorporated. The landscape of the island serves as a counterpart and co-player. Marxt shows, as often in his works, man-made, brute force interventions in nature: in this tableau of wasteland life moves, captured in mesmerizing cinematography. Marxt describes the cinematic procedure: »[...] Ralf thinks in loops, cycles, and ellipses. The disillusionment of the narrative and the destruction of the space-time continuum found their way into the cinematic structure as an expression of what it might feel like when thoughts do not stop and one is isolated in them.«1 The result is undogmatic, it is proliferating, authentic, and always on a respectful eye level with its protagonist – an enchanting experience that is unparalleled in intensity and honesty.

- Elke Kania"

Find the whole video here: https://vimeo.com/marxt

Find further information about Ralfs Farben here: https://www.ralfsfarben.com/

Delmes & Zander at FIAC Online Viewing Rooms 2021

Albert Leo Peil, La Diva de cinematique Marlene Dietrich, 1990, 32 x 24 cm,
ink on paper

Delmes & Zander is delighted to praticipate at the FIAC Online Viewing Rooms 2021, with works by Albert Leo Peil, George Widener and Alexandru Chira. The Viewing Rooms are taking place online from March 4th-7th.

 

About Albert Leo Peil

Only recently Delmes & Zander received the comprehensive oeuvre of Albert Leo Peil, which has not been exhibited or published before. Peil’s drawings are reminiscent of medieval works with religious themes, at the same time they are covering topics such as space, eroticism or fashion always in his very own, unique style.

Peil was born in 1946 in Berlin. He moved to Nuremberg where he studied two semesters at the Art Academy in the end of the 60s. Albert Leo Peil passed away in 2019.

 

About George Widener

George Widener was born in 1962 in Covington, Kentucky. In his early years, he developed a passion for mathematical computation and all manner of statistics and data, especially calendars. It was his obsessive habit to translate every number that he encountered into a calendar date. Some years later, George Widener, seen as a savant with an extraordinary aptitude for numbers, was diagnosed with the Asperger Syndrome. Later, Widener began to intentionally transform his fascination with numbers to which a collection of calendars, punctilious lists and drawings attest, into artistic works containing complex calendars, palindromes, historical landscapes, and translations of eastern calligraphic scrolls. Since 2000, he has focused particularly on large-format, highly complex drawings in which various aspects of cartography, mathematics, and numerology can be found.

George Widener has been shown solo at at the Hamburger Bahnhof (Berlin, 2013) and in groupshows at the Schirn Kunsthalle (Frankfurt, 2010), the Hayward Gallery (London, 2013), the Palais de Tokyo (Paris, 2015) and the Kunsthal Rotterdam (2016).

  

About Alexandru Chira

Alexandru Chira was born in 1947 in Tauseni, Romania. When his home village Tauseni suffered of yearlong drought during the 1990s Chira started to elaborate a sophisticated land-and-weather improving art equipment, a series of symbolic installations of painted metal, wire and concrete for the invocation of the rain and rainbow. The ensemble 'De-signs towards the sky for the rain and the rainbow' (1994 – 2004) is located on a hill in the middle of the village – a village surrounded by other hills – and is divided into 18 sub-ensembles. Most of his works, either those on canvas or the drawings and objects are inspiring sketches or derivative works related to the monument.

Chira was awarded the PhD in Visual Arts in 2006 for the work ‘On the Project and Utopia in Art – Self-Poetic Approach' and became professor of the Painting Department of the Faculty of Fine Arts at the Bucharest National University of Arts in 2009. Alexandru Chira passed away in 2011.

Chira's works have been presented in the context of various exhibitions, including Lisbon Architecture Triennale, Palácio Sinel de Cordes, Lisbon; The Sao Paolo Biennial Art Exhibition, Sao Paolo; The Visual Arts Museum, Galaţi; and The National Museum of Contemporary Art (MNAC), Bucharest, which presented a Retrospective of the artist in 2015. Since the end of 2017 Delmes & Zander exclusively represent the work of Alexandru Chira.