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Room for Thought-Landscapes of the mind
Yves Netzhammer, Furniture of Proportions, 2008; installation view at the SFMOMA on the occasion of “Room For Thought: Alexander Hahn and Yves Netzhammer“(July 10 - October 5, 2008) Courtesy Galerie Anita Beckers, Frankfurt
My first impression of Yves Netzhammer was that he is the kind of guy that spent hours playing with Lego, building blocks and Fisher Price toys; perhaps this was mixed in with a good dose of horror movies in his teen years. But this is pure speculation. Born in Schaffhausen, Switzerland in 1970, Netzhammer began his career as an apprentice for an architectural firm, later studying design before his first solo exhibition at the Museum zu Allerheiligen (Museum for All Saints) in his home town. He began working with video installations, slide projections, drawings and objects in 1997, all of which recently came together in two much talked about installations at the last Venice Biennale and an accompanying display during Documenta 12 (Kassel).
The discussion I would assume is about Netzhammer’s complex creation of objects in and around space. Using computer graphics he composes three- dimensional environments that become displaced virtual worlds, comprised of multiple and layered data images and actions. These images in turn are made of objects reduced to their most basic form that together relate non-specifically and incongruently. This gives the work an abstract quality, and it is this abstraction that makes the work fascinating, as the individual components making up the work appear unrelated and physically elusive both in time and space. Like a series of sanded-down building blocks constructed in a complex scientific formula we are unable to decode. “Room for Thought,” Netzhammer’s current exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), in collaboration with Alexander Hahn, is aptly titled.
This exhibition features “Furniture of Proportions,” Netzhammer’s multifaceted installation that began with a combination of pristinely-constructed drawings and sketches also on display. These ‘sketches’ are systematically brought together in multi-channel video projections refracted off mirror and wall, coming from a large tubular sculptural installation that resembles a bizarre scientific experiment from an undefined time, possibly from the future, but also quite plausibly from the past. The works are composed of deconstructed objects that resemble, or rather connote, elements in reality. They become symbols that lie somewhere between being tangible and fictitious: images of faceless humans in fleshy tones engage with dark black ape-like figures, animals and objects in a variety of dioramas that depict an impossible engagement but also illustrate some kind of thought process. There is a sinister undertone but at the same time these doll-like figurines appear helpless- stuck in the game. Tanya Zimbardo, Assistant Curator of Media Arts at SFMOMA clarifies: “This spatial narrative plays with surfaces and the exposing of interior structures. For instance, the color red of the wooden objects or ‘furniture’ is naturally associated with blood, and mirrors the red wounds that are a motif in the animations…. Netzhammer deals with spaces that are virtual, and primarily explores the idea of a human being perceiving its environment, encountering other humans or animals.” It seems Netzhammer purposefully creates these objects devoid of specific context, leaving the viewer the task of reconstructing their meaning in a world that is largely removed from the reality we know. As if recalling the subtexts of a book, a movie and real experience all in one.
It is said that this work is inspired by Nezthammer’s fascination with internal landscapes of the mind…however I am curious whose internal mind this landscape depicts? The artist, the viewer, or perhaps some outsider looking in on our world in some future realm? Zimbardo further explains “His juxtaposition of imagery expresses an interest in mental associations. While the work is not autobiographical in nature, the point of departure is the artist’s line of questioning: ‘What am I? What can I be? What is my relationship to the other? What is the relationship between this and that?’ …His cinema of the mind centers on speculation more than memory.” Netzhammer offers us a virtual world incorporating personal reflection, outward observation and imagination. Personal reflection on what it means to be alive, outward observation about the way in which humans and the world exist, and imagination by creating a scenario where these ideas can be played out.
However, it is the installation at the Swiss Pavilion, Giardini as part of the 2007 Venice Biennale, that brings together all of these elements most succinctly. A multimedia all-sensory installation, “The Subjectivisation of Repetition Project A” is strangely dark in content and expands on Nezthammer’s exploration of notions of space and time. Intervening with the building site itself, Nezthammer creates a sloping roof on the inside of which he projects four videos. Both the floor and roof are stenciled and there is a 14-channel soundtrack to accompany the piece. This combined with the reconfigured space makes the experience both complex and layered. Adding to this, Nezthammer has chosen imagery that is oddly morbid and, as in “Furniture of Proportions,” the images themselves relate incongruently and are de-contextualized in both time and space. The roof is a diorama of dark silhouetted figures with red, white and skin-toned objects suspended in undefined territory, making for a fantastical and alien landscape. Twin alien-like women with dark hollowed eyes and white faces nurse human babies watched over by four large birds, possibly ominous, possibly protectors. Around their necks multiple banded rings of gold much like those worn to signify marriage by the Ndebele tribeswomen in Africa. Their stomachs are tied with red string bows that are in turn tied to a large cylinder below leaking a dark grey substance. Distorted images of guns rest on a large red cylinder that also supports a human-like figure that seems to have been patched together out of found parts, or overgrown by some strange plant, severed body parts… one can’t help but associate the black with some insane evil that is taking over our rational world. Yet despite the grotesqueness, both the bizarre and the comprehensible imagery come together in a strange and quietly beautiful composition. Our existence, as perpetuated in this landscape, is both alien and familiar, disturbing and enticing.
The other much talked about installation was part two of this installation that appeared at the Karlskirche in Kassel during Documenta 12. A similarly distorted reflection of the world we live in, “The Subjectivisation of Repetition Project B” presented an otherworldly diorama using mediums that depict recognizable everyday objects in unlikely and bizarre juxtaposition. A large stenciled tree has shed leaves that have patterned the floor of the V-shaped booth like large wooden puzzle pieces. Mirrors dangle from its ceiling and move according to the vibrations of sound emanating from the walls. The ceiling stencil is black and white and resembles an eerie-looking, Kara Walker-style silhouette of oddly arranged animals and humans morphing together to create indiscernible and layered patterns of meaning. Netzhammer transforms these recognizable objects into what seem to be tools in a constructed game, ridding them of their obvious association and history. This reinvented context of the objects is so far from reality that their meaning becomes intangible. This feeling is further perpetuated by the venue, a church, housing an installation that has no obvious connectivity other than the form of the installation adapting itself to the structure of the space.
The charm of these environments is Netzhammer’s ability to manipulate spatial relations. By constructing a language in image codes based on both reality and fiction, Netzahmmer is able to create settings in which we can question and interrogate our own mortality and our relationship to the world we live in. Using recurring metaphors and symbols- black birds, blood, human body parts and the faceless android-type beings- Nezthammer gives us the notion that he is desperately trying to find the answer to questions about our existence. Each installation feels like a part of the process of this interrogation, with each construction being a new scenario that may offer a solution. In this way the work mirrors his fascination with how the mind processes thought, and whether this results in the work being a reflection of the artist’s internal mind or of an outward investigation or both, I am still not certain.
However it is Nezthammer’s highly-finished presentation, perhaps as a result of studying both architecture and design, that doesn’t allow the viewer dexterity. This is overcome by Nezthammer’s brilliant construction of imagery, medium and space that encourages speculation and suspense. The viewer can engage and associate freely to determine their conclusion. Zimbardo concludes: “His vision can at times seem nightmarish, but on a profound level, he underscores that human beings can be hurt, can go through transformative experiences, and affect change.” With this in mind, I am looking forward to seeing his work at the Chelsea museum this November in a group show curiously entitled “The Aesthetics of Terror.”
Claire Breukel: Curator and art critic. Since 2006, she is the Director of Locust Projects, a renowned Miami-based not-for-profit specializing in alternative contemporary exhibitions.
