«Lothar Hempel»
Artforum, New York, January 2007, p.125
Brazenly unbound by medium, Lothar Hempel's installations might include a coffeemaker, a black-and-white film, an oil painting of a harlequin, a mirrored minimalist sculpture, pages from the Frankfurter Allgemeine, and a felted wool puppet. Such disparate objects get called into service as props in Hempel's stagelike scenarios, which turn viewers into participants and bring to mind both Brecht's epic theater and Joseph Beuys's sprawling installations. This midcareer retrospective, featuring projects from the past ten years, offers an occasion to begin to untangle the artist's stylistic and referential webs. The show is accompanied by the first monograph devoted to Hempel's work, with texts by Liam Gillick, Lars Bang Larsen, and others.
Lisa Turvey