Für seine erste Museumsausstellung in China installierte Anselm Reyle in der charakteristischen Architektur des Aranya Art Center einen Querschnitt ausgewählter Werke seit 2004: Silberfoliengemälde, Skulpturen aus bemalten Fundstücken, Neonarbeiten, grob geformte und bunte Keramiken sowie eine größere Serie neuer abstrakter Bilder mit schimmernden Oberflächen. Am spektakulärsten ist die ortsspezifische Installation einer großen rautenförmigen Windspielskulptur, die von der Kuppel des Auditoriums des Museums hängt und sich um ihre Achse dreht. Ergänzt durch eine frühere, quadratische Variante des kinetischen Werks in einem anderen Saal, beginnt und endet dieser Katalog wie die Ausstellung in einem atmosphärischen Wechselspiel von Formen und Schatten. Das Buch dokumentiert die gesamte Schau in zahlreichen Installationsaufnahmen und Werkdetails und liefert so ein Zeugnis von Reyles Vision, wie der Künstler sie selbst beschreibt: „Der eigentliche Sinn der Kunst liegt darin, eine andere Welt zu ermöglichen. Eine Welt, in der andere Regeln und Assoziationen gelten. Diese Welt ist eine Insel und für einige von uns auch ein Rettungsfloß. Auf dieser Insel können wir neue Erfahrungen sammeln und viele davon in die reale Welt übertragen. Sie können etwas zu unserem Leben beitragen und es sogar völlig verändern.“

AFTER FOREVER
(Auszug aus dem Text von Sherry Lai)

Anselm Reyle’s highly recognizable artworks offer us new organic morphologies within established systems. When the artist employs agricultural tools and industrial materials, such as horse cart wheels, bales of hay, tinfoil, polyester film, glass, or computer and car parts, he coats their surfaces in bright synthetic neon lacquer to create chimerical beasts dressed in dazzling garments spanning multiple eras. Reading these works is like decoding the DNA of these various organisms, their component materials defining the artist’s intent. Observing the raw materials he is working with, we discover that they arise from different stages in the development of human society—they are testament to technical advancements and technological developments, and witness to humanity’s constantly deepening dependence on material civilization, the process of becoming “tools of tools.” As Neil Postman writes: “Technology is a double-edged sword, a Faustian bargain. For every advantage a new technology offers, there is always a corresponding disadvantage, something between Pandora’s box and Prometheus’ gift. Every technology is both burden and blessing, not either-or, but this-and-that.” As technologies have become omnipresent, the cultural context we are situated in is to a great extent defined by how we view our relationship with them, because once a technology is accepted, it will work tirelessly to advance its own goals…

The exhibition is centered around two suspended kinetic sculptures: Windspiel (Square) (2017), a set of moving squares laid inside each other, the outer one measuring 1.68 meters, and Windspiel (Curved Rhombus) (2020), a huge sculpture of more than nine meters in diameter especially created for the Aranya Center Arena. The two aluminum sculptures slowly rotate on their own axis driven by a programmed motor. Their stacked and twisted geometric forms move in hypnotic sustained revolution, referencing both Op Art and its visual effects and Kinetic Art, where movement is an integral part of the work. The dynamic, wave-like motion of the angular constructions of the square and the curved rhombus constantly change from perfect unity to division and distortion, back and forth again. Between the light and shadow, the cool, silvery color of the curved rhombus expands into a whole spectrum of nuances and is set in contrast to the concrete rawness of the circular arena.

These two Windspiels took their original inspiration from metal geometric wind chimes that can be found at arts and crafts markets. Reyle has reduced the shapes of these filigree pendants to their basic components and enlarged them, so that the objects take on room-filling proportions. The surfaces of the wind spinners, roughly sculpted with rounded gestural motions, emphasize their materiality. Reyle’s signature foil paintings were likewise first inspired by an everyday encounter. Years ago, the artist saw a window display in a Berlin store, which was draped with silver foil all over. The connection between this display of glossy material and fundamental questions posed by his art was immediately apparent to him—the pictorial value of the banal, the interweaving of “high art” with cheap consumer materials, and the tracing of the tipping points between beauty and kitsch. While the material always retains a sculptural aspect, Reyle treats it like paint, and the folds and contours of the foil within its rectangular containment recall the brushstrokes of gestural abstraction. While the action of draping becomes the focus of the work, thematically Reyle offers a portrait of contemporary at relates to Pop’s consumer aesthetics and to Jeff Koons’ employment of glitz and hyperrealism responding to the artificial splendor we desire to transcend the banality of the everyday.

...

In Zusammenarbeit mit Cornerstone Art