She is blind, but not spiritually unscented, or asleep. Justice never sleeps. At least not in the minds of the artists, where he works constant overtime. A permanent court-martial, which turns against everything – sometimes of himself.
That is why in the imaginary "Court of Right Reason", as the first part of the exhibition "Temptation of Freedom" at the Deutsches Historisches Museum in Berlin is called, the roles are not clear. Not only the opponents of freedom are sitting in the accused's dock, but also many of its supporters. Judges are not professionals, but amateurs. And their verdict is not recorded in documents, but in pictures – tables, sculptures, facilities, photos, video.
Upside down world: Artists judge not only the crimes committed in the name of Enlightenment, but in necessity also the Right Word itself, as a potential source of atrocities. Not only the sleep of Logic, they say, but her wake can also give birth to monsters – more frightening, from everything else.
Accused Robespierre and Marat: Guilty! says judge Yiannis Kounelis. His work, a metal plate, on which the names of the two heroes of the French revolution are written in chalk, as well as the phrase: «Free Death» (freedom or death), reminds, that anyone who did not then agree with the Jacobin regime, he was in danger of ending up in the guillotine. Jacobin freedom, based on "terreur", the terror, it produced unfreedom and death. A lighted white candle in front of the plaque gives a religious overtone to the verdict.
The judge's judgment is also speculatively extreme – whether it is a "sweet" greeting, as in the sculpture "Je vous salue Marat" (Greetings Mara) by Ian Hamilton Finley – where the phrase is the work itself, formed from neon tubes. Either a "sharp" sentence like a guillotine stroke, such as "The Age of Enlightenment" by Ginka Shonibare, which shows the Orthologus as beheaded, i.e. mindless body.
The exhibition presents projects 113 artists from total 28 Countries, which were created after the 1945. From the Greek side, except for the installation of Kounellis, a surrealist painting by Nikos Eggonopoulos is also on display.
Two prostitutes, surrounded by fascists, Stalinist and democratic symbols, they escape from a mess only to end up in a much worse one – as always happens in a "Civil War", as the work is called.
The starting point of works is freedom, as she secured the 1949 in the United Nations Charter of Human Rights.
The exhibition follows the aesthetic adventures of freedom against the background of the two blocs of the cold war, the east, under the guidance of the Soviet Union, and the west, under US hegemony.
A century and a half full of dizzying successes, but also tragic mistakes, captured in classical works, such as René Magritte's "Memory" from 1948, or in completely modern ones, such as "Untitled" by Maria Bartusova from 2012: a set of small amorphous sacks tied together with thin strings, which shows how fragile the balance between the components of the social fabric is today.
The newest of all projects: "Capital-ism" by Dan Perjovsky, the highest stage of social chaos, which was created just on the eve of the inauguration – at 17 October.
One of the good things about the exhibition is its systematic division into 12 thematic sections with more or less poetic titles: "Journey to the Garden of Wonders", "Fear and Darkness", "The other place" so to speak. The visitor can thus more easily understand the problematic and the affinity of the works per each section.
Of course, the most interesting ones are those that throw it into the "fine" with the established political and aesthetic perceptions.
Example, the "Portable engraving for three persons" by Tamas Oby, a 90x155x53 cm parallelepiped made of cardboard with three open surfaces, which was created 1969 in response to the Warsaw Pact tank raid the 1968 in Prague. A completely inappropriate one, if not a ridiculous means of self-protection, which, precisely for this reason, makes a mockery of any concept of war.
The 10x10 are also enjoyable, namely 100 unwound alarm clocks with the inscription "Minutes of the Hour", which Armand has lined up on a tableau (Fernandez). For the French artist there is only subjective time: political, personal, erotic, coke. Objective time, on the contrary, it doesn't exist, the metronomes, says, they record only the destruction of human life. That is why he tries to destroy destroyers himself – winding the clocks.
Question from the undersigned: Space, there is;
But even Damien Hirst's painting "Professions without a future" does not go back to ingenuity. Only here, instead of alarm clocks, extinguished cigarette butts are exposed. "They express insecurity in the labor market," says the artist. "This is the price of the so-called free market in the age of globalization".
The project, in front of which one remains dazzled, is "Flowers" by Aurora Reinhardt: A bouquet of gloves, on the edge of which they grow, like flowers, "living" polished nails. "It's the projection of men's fantasies in our accessories" says their producer. Feminists never sleep either: The latest here, the visitor realizes that the feminist "Court of Right Reason" does not behave with a glove. And that the fingers he will order to be cut off, it will not be feminine.
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The exhibition "Temptation Freedom" at the Historisches Museum Berlin, which takes place under the auspices of the Council of Europe, lasts until 26 January 2013.
