Ulrich Wüst takes photographs in the city. Situations of proximity and those of distance. His photographs construe the city by putting its supply of symbols into visual order. Such symbols could be traces of life from the past, deeply running streets or houses or political and economic centers of power or the emptiness that isn't absence but itself is a symbol in the city. Wüst's symbols stand for complex meanings. Even more so, the more clearly readable they are. As with this detail of the Thälmann statue by Russian sculptor Lew Kerbel. An unpopular gift from the final days of the GDR, we saw it as the epitome of hideousness in the government's fury of monument building. We tried hard to look away. But not Ulrich Wüst. He photographed the colossus soon after its erection. The photograph offered a new view of the statue. It didn't just reveal the absurdity of the pathetic gesture; more than anything, it revealed its belatedness in the history of the world. Sorry Thälmann with the clumsily cautious fighter's fist. Kerbel required tons of bronze to pour the failure into its form. Did this occur to him? I doubt it. And yet, the gesture of the fist points at nothing but the end of what it wanted to champion. Art can't deceive reality - only itself, as it does here. Perhaps that's why the statue has survived the storm of images since the fall of the Wall. Other, far better ones have been removed. Thälmann is left behind. He didn't deserve it. But we did.

(Translation: Rebeccah Blum).

Download this text (Word/Win9x)

©	Text: Matthias Flügge Web presentation: uinic - Pat Binder, Gerhard Haupt Email: contact@universes.art

Wüst  |  Artists  |  Project  |  Home

Denkzeichen 4. November 1989