Unpredictable Liars II

Mysterious veiled figures linger in the exhibition space; they could be from past decades or maybe the distant future. Mumbling under their cloak, they tell the story of The Raft of the Medusa, an oratorio by the German composer Hans Werner Henze, the tale of the French frigate Meduse, which ran aground off the west coast of Africa in 1816. Some castaways saved themselves on a raft, but in the end only fifteen of the hundred and fifty mariners survived. Translated through sculpture, a story of desperation, existential crisis and cannibalism unfolds. While Hans Werner Henze’s oratorio originated against the backdrop of left-wing thought in the 1960s, Fürnkäs’ work situates itself very specifically in the context of contemporary economics, referencing isolation and the struggle for survival.

For a long time, the self-portrait was regarded as a mirror of historical and social changes with the individual self in the foreground, until it acquired new levels of meaning from the 1960s onwards through increased critical questioning of its topicality: Artists went to physical extremes, put themselves in the place of others in an attempt to explore the Other, and gender roles were questioned through masquerades or role-playing. The self-portrait is replaced by self-staging - in the digital age supposedly more than ever in ways of a selfie - or in other words, the self is the opposite. Under the title Selbstsicht: Porträt-Identitäten (Self-view: Portrait Identities), the Sprengel Museum Hannover is now dedicating an exhibition to the artistic questioning of the self-portrait genre from the 1960s to the present day.

Focusing on media art, Fürnkäs explores self-perception through a confrontation with aspects of isolation and denial in direct communication. In contrast to Fürnkäs, Öffler’s work seeks contact with other people on the Internet, which is refused after he has revealed his true “self” as an artist. All in all, the field of tension between the artistic creative process and self-observation is dealt with. Observing oneself is a subjective, an almost intimate factor. The conditions, premises and intentions are therefore always individual and variable.

- Text by Olga Nevzorova