Igniting imagination, exploring the infinite
CROSS POLLINATION. A Solo Show by Lars Fischerdick. At Eclectica Contemporary. September 7 to 30. Preview: Dr DANNY SHORKEND
INNOVATIVE methods, strong intellectual content and guttural undercurrents – these works by Lars Fischerdick are likely to ignite conversation around such a unique aesthetic.
Having turned to art full-time rather late, his architectural background has come in handy. It allows for an understanding of materials and for powerful craftsmanship.
Yet, rather than be dictated by utilitarian and functional interests, as is unavoidable in the applied arts, such as architecture, here there are excursions and flights of the imagination that touch on metaphysics, mathematics, physics and even history and politics. In conversation with the artist, such dimensions become apparent.
His method relies on the combination of geometric structure, limited colour range and an investigation of the surface materiality through interventions, such as hacking and finely cutting into wood, and other carefully chosen formats.
Fischerdick uses resin, perspex and the nuances between grades and shades of black or white, the various subtleties of the wood surface. His style thus is both two dimensional and painterly, as well as three dimensional and sculptural.
For this show, although he simply described it to me, he also ventures into installation art, and it is sure to create a moving experience for the gallery-goer.
Of great interest was his understanding and use of projective geometry, that hints at the infinite. “The infinite” is a phrase oft used by Fischerdick, as he talks about the point that in its one dimensionality exists only as a concept, where a line is, in fact, an area of sorts, and where geometric structures delineate the passage of light and the shadows that come in its wake.
It seems he is trying to find a state of being which Bruce Lee may have referred to – drawing from Eastern philosophy – as the void. It is a “space” where opposites somehow converge, an all-inclusiveness, without partiality to either one pole of apparent dualities. Here, however he seems to want to say there is a kind of interconnectedness of the perpetrator and victim.
Fischedick comes from Germany and carries the weight of much of its history in a psychological sense. I asked him if he expresses anger when he works into these surfaces, even bisecting the structures, working right through the material.
He said he has come to peace with the past. I question whether such a position holds, as his “perpetrator-victim” dialectic as he explicitly states as the terror of the Nazis, is perhaps rather cold and sober. It is here that mathematics fails as a system, for that same precision and cunning was used to destroy.
Infinity then becomes a word that only appears to transcend the primitive actuality of the materials, when, in fact, as his one piece expresses: “Everything is broken”. Perhaps it is better to lament and struggle with the past, rather than to find peace with it.
Surely that is a buffer against simply repeating whatever atrocities and crimes against humanity that have occurred.
In fact, Fischedick likens the German experience to South Africa where he has lived for the past 15 years. The levelling of the Berlin Wall and the dismantling of apartheid happened around similar times. The perpetrator-victim dynamic applies equally well in the South African context.
This historical and, I suppose, political reading is curious, considering all that is presented are quite well-finished beautiful objects.
There seems to be tremendous order and precision. Yet it is abstract, so the interpretation around history is simply encoded, hidden behind the more metaphysical speculations and scientific experimentation.
Such an exhibition is timely, considering the rise of right-wing and extremist elements, but I would caution against seeing only such a narrative, and focus also on the potential psychological dimension, wherein light and shadow are inextricably linked, and it is through the transformation, rather than the annihilation of the Thanatos (Greek personification of death) within, that inner piece may lie.
This in turn necessarily leads to a more harmonious and integrated world “order”.
The exhibition will certainly delight, if not caution, and I end with the artist’s assertion that “a new identity” can be forged and here he is referring to the latter-day Germany’s more open policy when it comes to refugees and immigrants.