Corinne Wasmuht, “Llanganuco Falls”, 2008, in Precarious Worlds: Contemporary Art From Germany at the Mildred Lane Kemper Museum of Art, on the campus of Washington University in St. Louis, September 9, 2011-January 9, 2012.
Precarious Worlds: Contemporary Art From Germany
September 5, 2011 by Chris
I saw a big, very interesting Wasmuht painting in Curiger’s Illuminations show at the Venice Biennale this past summer. An interesting mix of ambition and dispassion that was intriguing.
I’ve got another post waiting to go, but I’m holding off now because my curiosity is piqued by your comment. I won’t get to see this show until late October, so won’t have that first hand experience anytime soon. What I want to know is how you are meaning the word “ambition” because it gets taken to mean different things. I think I know what you mean but not having first hand experience, I’m not sure.
It was a strange dichotomy I set up there, I guess. By using the word “ambition,” I was referring to a declarative quality in the piece, and an assertive claim to be heeded; a large horizontal painting, the initials included in its title suggesting the the aggregate spaces depicted were of (or included) airports. The picture was vibrant and intense in color, but was executed quite methodically, even coolly, which I think led me by contrast to a conscious apprehension of the “ambition” that informed a large-scale, immersive, multivalent image. The scale and complexity of the image spoke to a shared human experience; the (this) viewer was inside the picture, but was made conscious of finding no comfortable or stable place within it. So, like a 19th century “machine picture,” it made a case for being a dominating visual experience, while simultaneously denying or subverting this read through an application of shape and color that could be likened (admiringly) to paint-by-numbers.
The painting included with your post works quite differently, at least in reproduction…there seems to be a kinetic and and performative address to paint in this one. I need to do some digging, find out if the range between the two pictures is indicative of something in her work overall.
Well put. Thanks.