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Lothar Hempel’s work inhabits a realm of dreamlike theatricality, full of many coexisting mystic possibilities. Hempel brings together a world of figures, shapes and colours in the stagelike expression of a certain attitude: graceful, cool, deliberate and poised – yet open and heartfelt. Often starting from ‘just so much as a feeling’, he weaves his material from movement, objects, and representations of performance. Hempel’s narrative associations and contradictions effect a state of mind between consciousness and dream. His exhibitions present us with an open scenario, full of possibility for meaning and interpretation. In his photographs and in his sculptures Hempel incorporates found and collected images, often depicting dancers, performers, and societal transgressives. Images from Pina Bausch performances are recurrent, as are images of prostitutes and cult heroes of late twentieth-century stage and screen. In selecting their qualities of gesture and character, he provides a release from their contexts and stories, liberates them from their histories and latent nostalgia and infuses them with new life. These reborn characters come from a moment that is not quite our own – yet while they appear slightly unfamiliar, they are recognisable, and can speak to us. For his first individual show in Spain Lothar Hempel has devised an exhibition entitled Opium, comprising three sculptures from 2009-11 and six new works, of which the most remarkable are a series of paintings produced using a completely original technique. Opium is a much more a place than anything else. It’s a place on a stage in a theatre somewhere in the floating world. And as we zoom into this smoky room with its ghastly light and sleepy waiters we realise that we’ve been put on stage as actors. So we act! We tumble like dice between the stage sets depicting a side street in this very same district where the theatre is located. And as the play continues we are being pushed to enter a door, which is painted on a false wall. And as we walk through it, we arrive in the same theatre again. Now we see ourselves as actors on stage. I think to myself: “It’s very amusing to be your own audience. Especially when you are under the influence of a strong drug, such as opium.” “It’s a perfect circle”, you say, as you walk down the high street after the show. I’m not quite sure what you are referring to, but it makes perfect sense anyhow. We see a group of pagan beauties sitting there, smoking their pipes and chanting drones. The windows of the expensive shops vibrate slightly. Nervous people exchange nervous glances. There are so many neon signs here illuminating the night beautifully. One of them reads “Opium”, in a rather sober typeface. “How sentimental”, one might think, as if we knew any better. Not far from here is the famous bar “The Brown Moon”, where we are heading. It is owned by a droll cat, who tells us more about the neighbourhood. “It really has changed!”, she smiles while she pours us a drink. “Once it was just for people like us. And now it’s over! People like us just don’t exist any more.” I say: “My favourite David Bowie song is still ‘Heroes’, or better still the German version he recorded back in the days in West Berlin: ‘Helden’. The song’s lyrics make a sharp distinction between ‘them’ and ‘us’ – they have the power, we have love. Or as Leonard Cohen says: They have beauty, we have the music. I’d say: They have the world, we have the dream.” You shake your head when I say this. You find me boorish in my clumsy ways. And you laugh at me. You say: “They have the world, we have the drama!” As we walk further we enter the markets with their own particular atmosphere. Some weird kids whose parents are playing endless jazzy improvisations in the background are trying to sell us ordinary stones for good money. It’s an incredibly bold fraud, but we are convinced and happy to buy them – these stones have animistic powers, we believe, while the kids laugh their heads off. And as we try to follow the music, we are being cut by hard-edged fields of colour that split the world into indigestible parts. Above all, like an evil sun, hovers an invisible hand, terrifying. There is the old Chinese lady selling lost children to the perverts. They keep them as birds in tiny cages for their foul entertainment. Some are sold as jewellery. Some are transformed into stones. But don’t you worry! They are not real children, they are fiction. They are visions of an Italian director who was stabbed to death in the suburbs of Rome. But the Chinese lady is a real and entirely pragmatic person. She thinks: “They come and go. But I’ll be here forever!” And looking at her we know she’s right, God dammit! We learn: “Some slang terms for opium include ‘O.P.’, ‘hop’, ‘midnight oil’, ‘tar’, ‘dope’, ‘Big O’, ‘phantoma’, and the German ‘Brauner Mond’. The traditional opium pipe is known as a ‘dream stick’.” Somebody tells us: “Resident Evil is a media franchise owned by the video game company Capcom. It was created by Shinji Mikami as a survival horror game series in 1996. Since then, the game series has branched out to include action games, and has sold 46 million units as of September 2011. The Resident Evil media franchise has been expanded to comic books, novels and novelizations, sound dramas, live-action, computer-generated feature films, a painting and a variety of collectibles such as action figures and strategy guides.” I read: “Next page: Birthday party for Liara and Tomata du Plenty, with Chase Holiday and wild birds at Wattles Park in West Hollywood, May 28, 1979.” And as we walk further and further into this strange part of the city we finally come across a peculiar building. Its facade depicts the portrait of a young black Hmong girl from the twenties. She’s obviously under the influence, as we are under the influence. “She has very strange eyes”, you say. We would love to talk to her, but she’s most likely dead by now. Buried in the golden triangle. And as we reflect on this sadly, you stand up, trembling, and almost yell: “We want to believe that we have improved, that we are better off now. But in fact we haven’t changed, nothing has!” The raven sits on your hand and you pet him. He turns his head and tries to remember, but doesn’t understand. “What happened?”, the beautiful animal asks himself. “What happened to me?” Lothar Hempel On the day of the opening a group of female dancers will present a performance in the actual exhibition space. |
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