Two exhibition houses in Darmstadt show "Wild"

DARMSTADT – "Wild"? Wild, according to the translation of the French title, does not seem to have any effect in the two-part exhibition, which will be inaugurated Saturday at the Kunstforum of TU Darmstadt and Jagdschloss Kranichstein. On the contrary, in the art of objects and photographs of Emmanuelle Rapin, but also in the series of photographs by Angelika Krinzinger, all life, each individuality and each feeling seem fascinated ;elegance. The temptation, like a historical counterpoint in the luminous hall of the Kunstforum, seems to almost invade the baroque salons of the little castle, where the Landgraves and the Grand Dukes of Darmstadt celebrated their love of hunting.

But then, it gets closer to the works and allows to quickly understand that the two artists play with levels of reality in which the savagery until the brutality is hidden only in a charming way. Here died in beauty – but also restrained with symbols that flash like relics of untamed nature. In the spirit of the old ideas of "Mementi mori" (Remembrance of death!), Ornament and pomp are exhibited as barren breedings against human fleetingness, and wild nature. "is returned to his right.

Krinzinger's art photographs come here like old paintings – which is not surprising since they all come from a portrait gallery of Habsburg. But you do not see the noble heads and bodies decorating large-format walls, but individual hands that do not reveal who was standing there in the late baroque pose. Clbadified in series and small format, most of them lose their feminine hands (and thus the people they once belonged to) from the strange immortality that still attaches to the images. Only individualized by the end of sleeve of a noble dress or the delicate flower between the fingers, these hands are transformed into historical codes whose meaning is lost. Their time is over, their world is a mystery – and it's also an illusion, when the viewer before the portrait, who shows the "Great Landgravine" Karoline in the hunting lodge as a proud hunter, thinks to be able to return in the 18th century. Framed by two hands of Angelika Krinzinger, the painting of the lady with the masculine skirt becomes the story of the art she is.

First cooperation of these two houses of exhibition

"Wild" is the first exhibition of modern art in the hunting lodge and a cooperation initiated by Julia Reichelt, curator of the exhibition at the Kunstforum of the TU, because the second artist of his works also raises several the question of nature, of fleetingness and of materiality. provides. Emmanuelle Rapin, born in the forest of the Vosges, likes to evoke the freedom, but also the threatening nature of the forest, with skins, feathers of birds or martens. This must surprise the viewer. Because he always looks at materials such as wood or deer leg, which are part of the forest and hunting, but especially sees that these materials are integrated: the finer with hundreds of embroidered mini pearls high fashion, in the shade Silk scarves and eye-catching necklaces, the woman can very well wear, but also in surreal sculptures or the work story of the life of a young woman made in the 1880s by a psychiatrist Parisian demonstration until disappear without leaving a trace. The material of an embroidered pillow is an almost invisible highlight: it is fair hair, beautiful as in a fairy tale.

Which closes a circle of thought and experience. Like the fairy tale or the forest, Rapin's works always have two sides: they are of a dramatic beauty. They encourage us to abandon ourselves to the senses, because prudence is in any case useless: each situation presents imponderabilities, each life is a survival and each point of embroidery is part of this time of survival. And the tight-fitting silk dress, which can open the owner's access to fine society, does not just decorate delicate glbad beads and graceful butterflies. The shiny spines also belong to Rückendekolleté's ribbon, symbol of very painful borders.