‘Bright Solitude’ 

Exhibition 14 February – 14 March 2009

Since 2000, Anne Wenzel has been working on a strong and distinctive oeuvre of ceramic images and installations that place her sculptures in a landscape setting, in combination with murals. Her works occupy an intermediate position between historical tradition and modernity, and Anne Wenzel consciously chooses a traditional medium: clay. Her statues are often of gigantic size and, in recent years, are dominated by a fascination with violence: dying stags, fighting dogs, cars wrecked by bomb attacks and the shattered ruin of a forest after the passage of a hurricane.

In her work, you can perceive a difference between the statues (groups) of humans and animals and the landscapes, in which no living being can be found.

The sculptures of humans and animals concentrate on the horrifying incident itself; in contrast, the apocalyptic landscapes focus on the result of an action rather than the action itself.  As such, they seem to look back to the past and capture a moment of peace after the storm. It is to this category that Wenzel’s work ‘Chandelier’ (2007) and her new series of goblets (Bright Solitude, 2008/2009), now on display at Galerie Akinci, belong. They are contemporary vanitas symbols that speak of faded glory, decrepit decadence and loss in general.

Imagery of violence has a long tradition in art, from heroic, historical works depicting famous battles to hunting scenes and equestrian statues of kings; images that are simultaneously abhorrent and beautiful, and which some endow with metaphysical significance.

Anne Wenzel draws heavily on this rich seam of art tradition, but also collects television images of the tsunami, the Madrid bombings and photos of Hurricane Katrina. She combines these sources, using her memory and intuition, into the final working process. These are statues with a sense of urgency, which respond directly to violence in the media. Instead of desensitizing, their beauty invites us to contemplate and reflect on the modern world.

(With thanks to the catalogue ANNE WENZEL, Sweet Life, S.M.A.K., Gent 2008)

 Anne Wenzel (b. 1972 in Schüttorf, Germany) lives and works in Rotterdam. This is her first solo show at Galerie Akinci in Amsterdam.
Her solo exhibitions have appeared at the Stedelijk Museum in Den Bosch (2008), Museum Het Princessehof in Leeuwarden (2008), Kunstvereniging Diepenheim (2007), Buro Leeuwarden (2006) and The Agency in London (2006).

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