The Poetry of Reality
Tamara Grcic receives the 1822
Art Award of the Frankfurter Sparkasse
Tamara
Grcic, Untitled, New York 1995, 1995
Deutsche
Bank Collection, Courtesy Kuckei+Kuckei, Berlin
On
the streets of New York, she secretly photographs the backs of
pedestrians’ heads: Frankfurt-based artist Tamara
Grcic shows close-ups of an area of our bodies we can only see in the
mirror. Hair curls wildly over necks and spills over collars. The artist
films the backs of boxers training with a sack of sand – close-up, showing
only the play of muscles beneath skin glistening with sweat, accompanied
by the sound of the men groaning and their blows hitting home. Or she
shows a young Romany man playing accordion before a backdrop of
Frankfurt’s skyscrapers. His melancholic "gypsy melodies" form an acoustic
antipode to the cool financial towers rising high into the sky behind him.
With her photographs, films, and installations, Tamara Grcic isolates
parts of reality and succeeds in winnowing out a new, often poetic
presence.
Now, the graduate of the Städl
School has been awarded with the 1822
Art Prize. For over thirty years, the Frankfurter Sparkasse has been
presenting the oeuvre award to honor artists connected to the Frankfurt
region. Grcic’s 12-part series Untitled, New York, 1995 is
part of the Deutsche
Bank Collection. Over the course of a week, at a market stand in
Chinatown, she photographed still lifes of vegetables and fruit whose
random arrangement seems almost accidental. Next year, her series will be
touring through several South American cities as part of a large
exhibition presenting highlights of German photography from the Deutsche
Bank Collection.
Tamara
Grcic, Untitled, New York 1995, 1995
Deutsche
Bank Collection, Courtesy Kuckei+Kuckei, Berlin
In
the early nineties, Grcic focussed primarily on natural phenomena. She
used perishable materials such as eggs, fruit, vegetables, and flowers for
her installations and photographs. Growing and decaying: Grcic uses the
camera to record the various stages in the decomposition of fruit and
vegetables over the course of time – from the fresh fruit to the moldy,
dissolving object. The photographs inspire a multitude of associations;
they recall both scientific studies and the memento-mori
still lifes of the Baroque. In her 1994 Twelve-Hour
Exhibition, she arranged 700 melons on tables in Frankfurt’s Portikus.
The aroma of the fruits completed the visual impression, creating a
multi-sensual experience.
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Later, Grcic turned her attention to people: her films Bolek
and Lucy, Avonmouth are portraits of two young women; she also
photographed playing children or a man jumping into a lake, seemingly
hovering over the water’s blue expanse. Tamara Grcic records life’s
fleeting moments, enabling the viewer to take part in the random beauty of
the transitory.
Art at Work
Renowned
photographers document the art at Deutsche Bank
"Business
as usual" in the conference room at Deutsche Bank? Only at first glance.
In any case, the men dressed in dark suits are anything but lost in
concentration: one is on the phone, another is studying the carpeting,
bored; someone is carrying a tubular steel chair, while assorted groups
are sitting immersed in discussion. Nobody seems interested in the
colleague explaining the large-scale photograph on the wall. But something
isn’t quite right here. The room seems alien; somehow, it calls the Cabinet
of Dr. Caligari to mind. Moreover, all of these men bear an uncanny
resemblance to one another. And lo, it’s always the same nondescript,
balding, middle-aged man: the Berlin-based photographer Martin
Liebscher, director and actor in one. Round Table is the title
of a work typical for the series he began in 2002 called Familienbilder
(Family Pictures). In his photographs, the Kippenberger
and Bayrle
student always plays the role of the protagonists himself – from the
camping vacationers relaxing in their jogging outfits to the visitors and
indeed entire orchestra of the Berlin
Philharmonic. Liebscher assembles his works together on the computer
from many individual images. For the three motifs that he realized this
summer in the rooms at Deutsche Bank Frankfurt, the artist took 640
photographs.
Martin
Liebscher, Round Table, 2004
Deutsche
Bank Collection, ©VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2005
Round
Table is the October motif of the Deutsche Bank calendar Art at
Work 2006, created for the company’s clients and staff. Along with two
of Liebscher’s works, it also features commissioned works by Barbara
Klemm, Michael Danner, and Lee
Mawdsley. The London-based photographer’s works were made in
preparation for the exhibition 25
at the Deutsche
Guggenheim in Berlin. Mawdsley documented works of art in the bank’s
headquarters in Frankfurt, London, and New York for Visuell,
the magazine commemorating the anniversary exhibition of the Deutsche
Bank Collection. The two photographs by Michael Danner were made in
the Berlin bank building at Unter den Linden. On the June page of the
calendar, he offers a peek into the first-aid room where the New
York-based artist Tom
Sachs drew a Le
Corbusier building directly onto the wall using black marker. Barbara
Klemm, the "Grande Dame" of German press photography, created a cool,
elegant black and white image for July that depicts Max
Bill’s sculpture Kontinuität
(Continuity, 1986) before the twin towers of Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt –
the monumental endless strip in granite that has become the trademark of
Deutsche Bank’s commitment to art.
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