Page 109 - Art Review

Preis der Nationalgalerie 2017

Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin 29 September – 14 January

This year’s shortlist for the biennial Preis der Also on view in the Amazonas Shopping Center music in 1930s Palestine and assembled this into
Nationalgalerie (or National Gallery Prize) is the 30-minute telenovela Desde el Jardin a radio programme. Manna then searched for
offers up an unequivocal statement: all four (2016): filmed as a queer opus with over-the-top Palestinian musicians from the same demo-
artists – Sol Calero, Iman Issa, Jumana Manna acting in collaboration with Dafna Maimon. graphic groups with which Lachmann worked,
and Agnieszka Polska – are women, and none The telenova delivers the modern-day ‘opium and filmed them playing music researched by
of them was born in Germany. Outwardly, of the masses’, television as a leading distraction him. The film thus positions history and the
this is a welcome declaration in an age of both from our everyday precarity. present in a tense dialogue, in which traditional
growing nationalistic rightwing populism Iman Issa’s Heritage Studies (2015–17) focuses cultural heritage functions as a kind of catalyst
and increasingly visible misogyny; but such not on the power of excessive sensuality but for narratives on life in Palestine today – some
a proclamation always comes at the cost rather, and conversely, on strict conceptuality, scenes are shot in the musicians’ apartments.
of individual qualities that may not fit its as we know it from art-market-critical work Even if the film isn’t particularly original in
message. Some days after the opening, the of the 1980s. The Cairo-born artist creates terms of its aesthetics, it is convincing, thanks
four nominees published a statement against geometric sculptures that are reminiscent to the political weight of its subject matter.
the thematic shortlist. In their opinion, they of minimal art and react to examples from Finally, Agnieszka Polska presents her two-
were being instrumentalised by the museum antiquity. This reaction is, however, structured channel video What the Sun Has Seen (Version II)
in the services of political correctness and less through mimetic reproductions than (2017). The film is partly animated, combining
sponsorship relations; they also complained it is through an interpretation of Issa’s impres- computer-generated images with real footage
that they received no fee for the show. sions of the past. The artist calls her reconfigura- from everyday scenes. A cigarette butt, for
Despite all that, the jurying has led to tions ‘mental prints’ – subjective remembrances, example, seemingly flies through the film
a unified aesthetic constellation, one where seemingly, less to do with how something screen; a busy street is shown in fragments;
the works contrast each other effectively. looked than how it felt – about which she then and sun and earth, rendered like emojis, show
Sol Calero presents her multipart spatial comments via short texts that read like museum up again and again. Amid this flood of images
installation Amazonas Shopping Center (2017). information labels. The work HS 22 (2016), and words, the sun and earth – gifted with ersatz
In the tradition of Belgian artist Guillaume for example, consists of two bowling-pin-like mouths – tell of our environmental problems,
Bijl’s displacements, the work assembles structures stuck into each other; the accompa- at times with a comedian’s humour, at other
functional spaces into a cheap-looking shop- nying text points programmatically to the times with a scientist’s gravitas. But all in all,
ping complex in the exhibition space: a hair original’s fictional location: ‘The Global and despite its virtuosic handling of animation’s
salon, a salsa studio offering dance classes, Museum of Ethnic Arts and Culture Collection’. possibilities, What the Sun Has Seen remains
an Internet cafe, a travel agency, a money- Princeton-born Jumana Manna shows sev- trapped in smart pop-cultural convention and
exchange station. The Caracas-born artist eral works, including the video project A Magical is thus the weak point of this otherwise inter-
wrapped the ensemble in a Caribbean aesthetic Substance Flows into Me (2015), with which esting exhibition. Ironically, given that Polska
full of lush sensuality, one that’s long been she brings a more documentarian aesthetic walked away with the prize. The decision seems
a cliché for an exotic Latin American lifestyle. to the exhibition in lieu of a fictional narrative. a wrongly drawn conclusion from Documenta
At the same time, the economies gathered here The starting point was Manna’s exploration 14: that political art is acceptable, but only
tell of a precarity that globalisation has brought of the work of Jewish ethnologist Robert when it behaves itself. Raimar Stange
about in big cities over the past few decades. Lachmann, who researched traditional Arab Translated from the German by Kimberly Bradley

Sol Calero, Amazonas Shopping Center, 2017 (installation view. Photo: Trevor Good.
Courtesy the artist and Laura Bartlett Gallery, London

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