Joachim Seinfeld

Georg Teiner about Neighbours

Joachim — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 15:10:14 +0000

Read Georg Teiner’s article Zeit der Erinnerung about the Neighbours Series on BOLD – THE MAGAZINE, page 56 ff:

http://issuu.com/boldmag/docs/boldmag_05_2011

Flavia Montecchi about Neihbours, the current exhibition at artMbassy, Berlin

Joachim — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 12:36:54 +0000

JOACHIM SEINFELD
Neighbours
-
and RAUL GABRIEL
Back2Berlin
19th – 29th November 2011
Opening Saturday 19th November 2011, 7-10 pm
The historical account of the the past happens through the theorising of events handed down from olden times to the present. To understand such events, we are used to a vertical reading of the involved events: History takes shape in front of our eyes as a pyramidal diagram of dates, with a strict cause and effect relationship.
In the works of the artists Joachim Seinfeld and Raul Gabriel – presented together inside of the spaces of artMbassy in an international scale double solo show – the reading of History happens through the superimposing of visual stratifications, able to generate a syntactic structure both mental and horizontal at the same time. As far as the series “Neighbours” is concerned, in the works of the German artist Joachim Seinfeld, the conservation of the past times can be compared to an atypical practice of the restoration, which realizes the conservation of the matter in the opposite way. After studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, the artist felt the need to preserve a part of the history of his city and not only of that, working on the most lived surfaces of buildings falling into decay. After preserving some parts of the removed walls, the artist applies on them rubble pictures and material of archives with the emulsion, creating two-dimensional images taking their names from the address in which the initial rip took place. A meticulous and arbitrary practice of restoration starting from a private search in order to open itself to the public sphere.
The conservation of Joachim Seinfeld opens a wide range of imagination that makes user aware of the historical and architectural memory of his city, because of a strange fusion of particulars both material and visual, contained in turn in a second image: the worked find and what it was. The artist writes: “It is therefore also a work about what we want to do with our cities, what do we want to preserve…”. Memory and current events meet themselves in an invisible frame collecting in part a present which is ruined from the events – the wall with what the artist has removed – and partly a past immortalized from someone else’s lens – the surface on which the artist works. The final image is a superimposition of suggestions recalling Berlin’s social and aesthetic liveability, embracing practices of popular art and personal archives search.
To seal the frames of this two-dimensional and dream-like trip we have the still of the video of Raul Gabriel’s “Back2Berlin”. The white shape of a bike caught on the window of an urban overground wagon appears on a close-up shot over a series of Berlin landscapes running behind during the trip of the artist to the airport. Urban noises mixed with sound fragments gradually emerging and revealing their disturbing historical root. The stratification of time and memory a horizontal reading, taking on an dream-like power tank to the use that the artist makes of the reverse. The visual levels of the video-image keep the bidimensionality of Joachim Seinfeld’s works, while the movement on which they realize themselves activates a “hypnotic flow” underlined from the leitmotiv of the background sonorities: the power of memory comes back right where the landscape seems to dart away with the journey of the train.
Raul Gabriel’s message is focused on the power suggested from the symbol “bike”. It is not the train the leitmotiv of its trip in spite of the fact that it is the real motor of the movement in the video: it is the “bycicle-formula” that “imposed on the city, clashes with its message of enviromental reconciliation and seems to invite to an ecology of the mind before any”. (Raul Gabriel).
Both works, on show together inside of the spaces of artMbassy, use the narrative power of the still image multiplied with many layers of visual stimulation which causes a “mental movement” moving towards a memory that turns from individual to general. A different key to an understanding of the everyday life of a city in endless movement, searching its past and its surroundings, to cross it later in a present which is visionary but faithful to the vital soul beating inside of it.
Flavia Montecchi

Oncoming Exhibitions

Joachim — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 18:37:55 +0000

Berlin: Simon-Dach-Strasse 8 II

Current Exhibition:

A Tribute to David Bowie
HAUPTSTRASSE
The Berlin Years 1976 – 1978

Egbert Baqué Contemporary Art
Berlin
March 16th – June 8th 2013
With works by Abetz & Drescher, Claus Feldmann, Rainer Fetting, K. H. Hödicke, Ivar Kaasik, Wolfgang Neumann, Tim Plamper, Joachim Seinfeld und Snapple

Catalogue:

German/English, 68 pages with over 40 illustrations, Softcover – Euro 15,00
ISBN 978-3-00-042031-3

Now in the Collection of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art:

Joachim — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 15:24:55 +0000

From the series Berlinbilder: Auguststrasse 52 VI

and from the series German Gemutlichkeit: Musician and Artist I

Joachim Seinfeld Explores Identity and Historical Reality by Jaiyant Cavale

Joachim — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 20:44:37 +0000

Joachim Seinfeld Explores Identity and Historical Reality

by Jaiyant Cavale

Self identity is a concept that is flawed, like many others in modern psychology. Identity as a singular concept cannot support itself unless a group of identities that exist within a person are recognized. A singular identity is neither practical nor is it helpful, for that would only make a person rigid and less conforming to the environment around them. The issue of identity is of special importance in a country like Poland which has witnessed history unlike most other countries have.

Poland lies caught between the identity of being a member of the European Union, that of being invaded by the Germans, the identity of being a spectator of millions of Jews killed in the death camps, the identity of cold and long winters of death and destruction which are beyond human comprehension. Poland and other Eastern European nations have gone through changes that most countries have not seen in decades.

Since the 90s, Eastern European nations have struggled to come to terms with a globalized environment while trying to leave behind a past that was riddled with war crimes, communism and secret police. In fact, people in these areas are confronted with so many socio-political and cultural influences, each contradicting the other, that people would not realize the many identities within them.

Joachim Seinfeld’s Beisl-Ba?agan was an exhibition that featured a journey through the Polish experience of life, from within and from outside. Joachim tried to explore the differences and similarities between being a traveler, a tourist, a spectator, a participant and an artist while he moved from towns and cities across Poland. Joachim used the photographs of Poland in the nineties and combined them with photographs of his own in the studio.

Using black and white photography in order to avoid color emulsion, he juxtaposed the idea of a tourist caught in a country and that of a native stuck and frozen in time, without realizing it. The photographs appear old, though they are from the nineties. This suggests the historical identitycreated by and for Poles, especially that of the World war. While doing so, the photographs explore and question the idea of identity formation and identity creation.

If one were to view these photographs as a tourist brochure, one could see Joachim in various cities of Poland trying to fit in the local landscape. If one were to watch it from the eyes of a German, the perception would again be different, with thoughts harking back to the fences and gas chambers. It is indeed significant for a person with Jewish identity to explore Poland, or even some other nation that is closely linked to his ancestors’ plight.

Identity could be a monstrous tool for the annihilation of peoples. Those who do not fit in to the image of the ideal identity can be exterminated on the basis of their identity being unacceptable. Homosexuals, Jews, Gypsies, Handicapped people and others were exterminated by the Nazis for they did not fit into the concept of an ideal identity. Ironically, it is almost impossible for a person to have a single identity. If the Nazi officer who ordered for the transporting of thousands of Jews to Auschwitz found the idea of German national identity suffocating, he perhaps would have chosen to flee the situation and avoided committing the crime.

Joachim’s Beisl-Ba?agan does not provide answers but poses questions to these assumptions on self identity. If one were to acknowledge and accept the sub identities and alters each person has within them, one would see a more accepting and liberal attitude. The traveler finds a new meaning and identity in each o the photographs. It is up to the viewer to decide if the traveler or character embedded in the landscape or natural surface is a reflection of his own identity or the identity he creates for others.

The surface or landscape explores the identity that is set within an individual or a person. The character or the traveler explores these surfaces, and each time finds a new identity within him. In fact, each viewer could find a different person in the photographers. With such multitude of identities and sub identities, the question of a national identity remains negated. Joachim Seinfeld held the exhibition titled “Beisl-Ba?agan” to explore these notions and ideas about identity and historical identity which are not limited to Poland, but across cultures.