{"id":108356,"date":"2021-06-07T21:14:45","date_gmt":"2021-06-07T19:14:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/?p=108356"},"modified":"2021-06-07T21:14:47","modified_gmt":"2021-06-07T19:14:47","slug":"josefine-reisch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/2021\/06\/07\/josefine-reisch\/","title":{"rendered":"Josefine Reisch: if history is a stage"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

When a story is nearing its end, we\u2019d better start telling another one. \u201cThe trouble is,\u201d according to Ursula K. Le Guin, \u201cwe\u2019ve all let ourselves become part of the killer story.\u201d A story shaped as a weapon \u2013 a bone, an arrow, a sword or a spear \u2013 forged for and held by the hero to hunt, kill, and ultimately write his bloody tale as a victor. Browsing through history books, or Wikipedia pages, we\u2019ve all come across such things \u2013 \u201cthings to bash and poke and hit with, the long, hard things.\u201d What we haven\u2019t heard of is the item, or device, where things are gathered: the container of the story \u2013 the bag. It\u2019s the tool that allows one to collect and store; to bring energy in, instead of forcing energy out. [1] For Ursula K. Le Guin, as for Josefine Reisch (born 1987), the bag is where uncharted narratives come to light, through which another story \u2013 with unnamed characters and secret perspectives \u2013 starts to take shape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"reisch\"
Installation view, Plus que Moi<\/em>, 2016. Kunsthaus NRW, Aachen-Kornelim\u00fcnster.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The bag is an equalizing force; there are hardly any hierarchies inside it. Things get easily lost, but then are always found. They get entangled and their trajectory is erratic; they seem to move in whirlwinds, not so much in linear ways. Here, heroes and conquerors, kings and emperors have no plinths to stand on, so they start to mingle with house keys and trinkets, with jewelry and junk. Through a cognizant playfulness in the face of historical truths, Reisch deconstructs objects of power, piercing the obvious and the self-evident. Her work deliberately eludes what is already given by European history \u2013 which often overlaps with male-centered accounts \u2013 to understand the structures underlying the birth of ideals, ideologies and myths, criss-crossing between eras, references and interests to mix them into a different song \u2013 or a medley, a mash-up, a compilation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"josefine
Josefine Reisch, Birkin 30 Niloticus Crocodile Himalaya<\/em>, 2020, oil and metal leaf on canvas, 122x152cm. Courtesy of the artist.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"reisch\"
Josefine Reisch, Samples (mauve ostrich, tinted crocodylius niloticus, tortoiseshell)<\/em>, 2018. Oil on paper, 57x76cm. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Noah Klink.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

While the carrier bag of history may have dissolved or disappeared as an item, frayed by the passing of time, squashed by the main storyline, the teachings of \u201cthe feminist way to gather\u201d and their legacy are alive and well. Despite her interest in Le Guin\u2019s theories, Reisch\u2019s passion for historiography has to do with her origins. Her family was from the German Democratic Republic, the Eastern part of Germany. \u201cAt the moment, some people would think of this as being something interesting, whereas shortly after the fall of the wall it was completely uncool. Nobody cared about it.\u201d Zeitgeist-y phenomena such as these \u2013 when a single event or situation can be read in many ways \u2013 are what draws the artist to look at the world through the lens of historiography, and to challenge assumptions around authenticity. Still, most of what she does has analytical intentions, rather than autobiographical. \u201cWhat actually happened is always questionable, especially when it\u2019s further back in the past. It\u2019s almost up to fashion and trends how you show and tell stories.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"josefine
Josefine Reisch, Faberge\u0301 Coronation Egg<\/em>, 2018. Oil paint and gold leaf on paper, 211x143cm. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Noah Klink.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Thinking about the female image, and how its perception and design has changed in the course of the centuries, Reisch identifies the Renaissance, a period that holds a particular charm for her due to its \u201ccosmopolitan momentum,\u201d as a breaking point for its influence on female portraiture. \u201cWhat I always loved about these paintings, which also appeared on coins, is the side profile.\u201d Neither seductive nor passionate, the subjects in these portraits stand unmoved, their gaze never meeting that of the viewer. Their names, however, have mostly been forgotten, and the loss of identity seems to be accompanied by a scarcity and fleetingness of political power. A relationship that Reisch has extensively explored in her work is that between the history of portraiture and today\u2019s practice of selfie-taking and publishing as a means of self-representation and promotion, which is dotted with contrasts and analogies; among the latter is the issue of objectification. For the artist, what has actually changed since then is merely the quantity of portraits produced, and the consequent shift in terms of value. The empowerment that purportedly follows visual, and physical, self-promotion, instead, remains debatable. \u201cSelfie-taking is empowering because you can do it \u2013 that\u2019s for sure.\u201d The question, for Reisch, is \u201cwhere that leads you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"reisch\"
Josefine Reisch, Profile #23<\/em>, 2018. Oil on canvas, 30x40cm. Courtesy of the artist and Zabludowicz Collection.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"josefine\"
Installation view, Framing<\/em>, 2020. Galerie Noah Klink, Berlin.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Exploring the context of presentation of portraits and interrogating their form, as she did in her series Framing<\/em> (2020), first exhibited in Berlin at Noah Klink<\/a>, is a way for Reisch to dissect sources of authority, which may be both institutional \u2013 as with museums \u2013 and object-based \u2013 in the case of picture frames. But her interest in history, profiles and frames is both conceptual and formal. The meticulousness through which Reisch examines decorations, embellishments and trimmings while researching past iconographies and trends is strictly tied to her quest to understand the dangers and powers of ideology, and how it impacts the production of value. \u201cWhen I think about value I also think about validity \u2013 how is that value generated.\u201d With the development her 1:1 cut-out sheet paintings, a significant part of the process is getting to know an object\u2019s design. The first one she made was a reproduction of Napoleon Bonaparte\u2019s desk. In Jacques-Louis David\u2019s The Emperor Napoleon in His Study at the Tuileries<\/em> (1812) \u201cthere\u2019s the desk, and he\u2019s in front of it.\u201d Reisch found out that Napoleon largely influenced its design: he decided what kind of animals and ornaments should be on it, as well as their placement. Plus, she says, the desk had \u201ca funny function\u201d: when it looked messy, it could just be folded down. That way, it looked like Napoleon never had to work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"reisch\"
Installation view, Plus que Moi<\/em>, 2016. Kunsthaus NRW, Aachen-Kornelim\u00fcnster.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere\u2019s this moment when you realize it\u2019s really good to know your enemy. If you move into a scary house, you have to walk in every room, look in every cupboard, and step into the basement. Once you\u2019ve seen everything, you\u2019re not scared anymore.\u201d Reisch\u2019s practice is entrenched in the demystification of how legends come to be. In an attempt to grasp the erasures of history, the artist scrutinizes the way stories are told, influenced, manipulated, spanning from Hollywood biopics to historical reports, wondering how they could have unfolded otherwise. She describes her approach as being \u201ca bit like a reenactment\u2026 a way to get to know it and change it a little.\u201d In fact, Reisch got in touch with art and art-making through dramatic arts. Both her parents are artists; her mother studied painting, while her father works in theater as a stage designer. During her childhood, Reisch would often follow him to his workplace, where, throughout the years, she ended up watching loads of plays \u2013 something that turned out to be instrumental for the establishment of her practice later on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"reisch\"
Josefine Reisch, It\u2019s very difficult to keep the line between the past and the present. Do you know what I mean?It\u2019s awful<\/em>, 2020. Screen print and etching on silk, 80x83x3cm. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Noah Klink.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Within the framework of traditional theater, the concept Reisch has always been fascinated by belongs to the Brechtian tradition. \u201cThere, the stage is not something that blends into reality or tries to engage with your emotions. It\u2019s really like a border. There\u2019s no catharsis; there\u2019s a distance and perspective on whatever you think about.\u201d Bertolt Brecht\u2019s theory of the estrangement-effect \u2013 which, together with its political implications, is among the artist\u2019s main influences \u2013 aims to recognize and contextualize an object\u2019s essence as historical, as opposed to natural or immutable: namely, as having been caused by (and altered across) time. While Reisch\u2019s engagement with the interpretation of history is bound to \u201cthe layers of meaning and misreadings\u201d it opens up to, what she loves about the stage is how it offers the \u201cpossibility of illusion.\u201d The title of one her works, a screen print and etching on silk from 2020, eloquently speaks about Reisch\u2019s view on the function of illusion and fantasy over one\u2019s perception of truth in time, history, and, more generally, reality. It<\/em>\u2019<\/em>s very difficult to keep the line between the past and the present. Do you know what I mean? It<\/em>\u2019<\/em>s awful.<\/em> These words were spoken by Edith Bouvier Beale, the cousin of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, in the 1975 documentary Grey Gardens. In the film\u2019s production years, Little Edie and her sister lived in a house populated by raccoons, badgers and fleas, without running water. Although their wealth had been depleted, they kept their \u201cgrand dame attitude,\u201d the artist says, adding that \u201costentation and luxury can be a fantasy.\u201d It is the story that makes the difference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"josefine\"
Josefine Reisch, Tulipiere (gothic)<\/em>, 2018. Beeswax, pigment, styrofoam, 75 x 25 x 25 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Noah Klink.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Similarly, within Reisch\u2019s paintings, the illusion created by gilded ornaments, legendary characters and grandiose endeavors becomes the means to tell a story that, sometimes, may not even exist. Working with history, like she does, is about refusing to serve the facts that have risen to the surface as certainties. It is an act of dismantling \u2013 of breaking down walls and barriers \u2013 to unearth what has always been there, just hiding all along. \u201cSince history is the endless process of human creation,\u201d it is, for the same reason, the \u201cunending process of human self-discovery\u201d \u2013 akin to self-creation, or autopoiesis<\/em>, as Zygmunt Bauman writes. [2] A notion that grasps and encapsulates \u201cthe gist of the human condition,\u201d autopoiesis<\/em> intersects with Reisch\u2019s unwillingness to give in to orthodox storytelling, or to the reverberations of the tale of the hero and his spear in our present day. Instead, in a world where \u201ccreation is the sole form discovery can take,\u201d her art makes room for, and gives form to, discovery through self-creation, while being the source \u2013 and not the object \u2013 of an act.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

[1] Ursula K. Le Guin, 1986, The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction. Available at https:\/\/theanarchistlibrary.org\/library\/ursula-k-le-guin-the-carrier-bag-theory-of-fiction<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[2] Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Modernity, 2000, Cambridge: Polity Press, p.203<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Josefine Reisch and not letting yourself “become part of the killer story.” An essay inspired by the carrier bag theory of Ursula K. Le Guin<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":108370,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1793],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-108356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-to-be-discovered"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108356"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108356\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/108370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}