LOTHAR HEMPEL
Alphabet City
11 February – 6 May 2007
Opening Saturday 10 February
Tuesday - Sunday / 2 - 7pm

INTERVIEW February 2007 / 3mn14s

© La Compagnie des Vidéastes 02/07

Hempel transforms the exhibition space into a stage on which the visitor becomes an actor in a story full of cross-references and contradictions. The works are at once the synopsis, the set, the characters and the props of a play. They represent the different parts of a narrative created out of references to German history, psychology, Greek tragedy, cinema, music, political and social history and neurology for instance. He also borrows a number of different styles and strategies, whether invented by Dada, Constructivism, the Bauhaus or Joseph Beuys. He uses visual metaphors by incorporating images or found objects.
The title of this show, Alphabet City, which is also the name of a neighbourhood in New York, was chosen as a reference to its retrospective nature, but also to indicate that it is rooted in reality. Conceived by the artist with curator Florence Derieux, Alphabet City comprises a narrative sequence punctuated by indicators of the artist’s development. The order is not chronological. The new installations in each room shed light on a specific phase of Hempel’s evolution. And while this show reprises elements from key exhibitions of his career to date, the only one it fully recreates is his 1997 London show entitled Samstag Morgen, Zuckersumpf (This Bittersweet Disaster) (cf. room 8). In the central room are recent works or new pieces created specially for this show. The images, evoking the moving body and time, reflect the artist’s interest in performance. Finally, in room 9, the artist has produced a special double projection for this exhibition based on earlier video pieces. This is analogous to sampling, a practice Hempel also uses in his work as a DJ.

Lothar Hempel, talking about his work
Toby Webster: Is it possible for you to name central themes and issues that are the basis for the development of your work?
Lothar Hempel: Paradox: Should someone become what he wants to be, in order to combat the fear of death? Consideration of moral, ideological and ethical issues, are my central motifs, and are delivered by questioning the concept of the self. The self here is fluid and dynamic, a social metaphor. It doesn't have a beginning or an end. I like to construct situations that have a dreamlike quality; where the insides and the outsides are not contradictory, where you as the viewer are free to reconsider the options while standing in the middle of the conflict.

TW: Within your work the characters and scenarios are set up as if it were a game. Do you see this as a useful analogy?
LH: Games traditionally lead to a result, whereas I like to keep my scenarios as open-ended as possible. However there are formal similiarities. Maybe it comes from the way I see my characters as being as ritualised as pieces in a game of chess. There is no depth to the figures. They're representations of principals rather than characters. Sometimes I wish my installations were narrative machines which could produce endless variations, like the kabuki-theatre that creates meaning, beauty and truth only out of its formal strength.

TW: I think you are working with psychological perceptions collaged with formal sculpture. There is a point in your work where you seem to describe the soul as dead. What do you think about that?
LH: My work also has a strong cinematic side. In both film language and dream language, you find images that are resistant to consumption and interpretation. Maybe these images are soulful because they are void. They seem to float in a parallel world beyond the regulation of the narrative and the plot. They are not dead, they are ghosts.

“Discussion between Toby Webster and Lothar Hempel”, Emma Stern (Ed.), Lothar Hempel -Propaganda, ICA - Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, 2002.

Lothar Hempel, born 1966 in Cologne. He lives and works in Cologne. Training at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf (1987-1992).