Simon Wachsmuth's video installation From Heaven High at MKM Gallery, Berlin (25/05/2024)
MKM Gallery presents a video installation by Simon Wachsmuth, referencing the famous "Prussian Archangel" of the Berlin DADA exhibit 1920: a puppet hanging from the exhibit's ceiling wearing a Prussian uniform with a pig's mask on its face. The work was understood then as a scathing assault on the military, and on the bourgeois culture at large. The artist's video work provokes a re-visiting of post WW I anti-war iconography way beyond the debates engulfing ruangrupa's documenta fifteen in Kassel 2022.
"In order to understand this work of art completely, one should drill daily for twelve hours with heavily packed knapsack in full marching gear on the Tempelhof Field." (John Heartfield & Rudolf Schlichter on the "Prussian Archangel" at DADA, Berlin 1920)
Solo & Friends exhibitions are dedicated to one single position, accompanied by the entire current ensemble of MKM arists. Simon Wachsmuth's From Heaven High is accompanied by works of Walid Raad, Elisabeth Masé, Ali Kaaf, Taysir Batniji, Katharina Karrrenberg, Benyamin Reich, Maryam Motallebzadeh, Anita Kapraljevic, Chaza Charafeddine, a.o.
https://taswir.org/2024/05/simon-wachsmuth/
Image: Simon Wachsmuth. From Heaven High. Video Still.