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Walk on the Wilde sideNotes on Sibyll Kalff's "1000 prickly pears"by Daniel Kothenschulte The idea of the desert as a space for imagination is an issue in 20th century art. The surrealists Tanguy and Dali explored this wideness to express space in their tableaux, that in the true sense of the word, "dedusted" themselves from all frowst of the forgone orientalism. Filmmakers such as Erich von Stroheim ("Greed"), John Ford ("Three Godfathers"), Michelangelo Antonioni ("Zabriskie Point") and David Lynch ("Wild at Heart") chose existing deserts as locations for their existential drama. In the field of poetic arts, the poet T.S. Elliot pointed towards the single grind of sand, when he prefixed his famous poem "The Waste Land" with a greec quotation from Pretonius' "Satyricon", that recalled the greec prophetess Sibyl. This mythological character was condemned to spend her days in a bottle in the temple of Cumae, but at least Apollo granted her a long lasting life, that was supposed to last as many years, equalling the number of grinds of sand, that she was able to collect in her hand. But not an everlasting youth was included, and so the unfortunate prophetess aged, till she seemed to sherly desintegrated over the centuries: "I saw the Sibyl of Cumae with my own eyes, hanging in her bottle. And when the young ones asked, what do you desire?, she answered: I desire to die."
Even if Sibyll Kalff is not that occupied with the desert you will always find a thudded coffee-table book about the scant beauty of desert landscapes in her small Cologne apartment. One of her most recent work groups had her transform her and her family's expired passports into documents of real and imaginary journeys by the means of collage, paint-over and assemblages. The one thousand piece series "1000 prickly pears" that dates back to the year 1994 was produced under the even more spatial conditions of the apartment that she shared with artist Donald Lessau. One thousand sheets were filled with ever changing examples of that species of cacti by using coloured ink. Just as it is the case with her improvised music there was no cognizable routine attuned at any point. The restrictions of concept art meet with the freedom of improvisation. As a musician and composer she journalises the process of creation instantaneous in her recordings. She often enough avoids invitations, to perform her music in public. Why should a painter paint the same tableau another time for an audience? The French actor Michael Simon had an insurmountable aversion, to meet the demands of directors for a second take. "The second take is always a lie", was what he used to tell them. Viewed as such, the drawings of the prickly pears can be irritating: Does Sibyll Kalff perform one and the same tune for a thousand times? The opposite is the case. She is proves the infinitude of improvisation by using the most reduced formal means one could think of. At the same time she condenses it within the formal restrictions. This is not the only inventive contradiction. Anybody who wants to depict a desert, harldy ever starts with its vegetation (Walt Disney's 1953 film "The Living Desert" may be an exception as it portraits it's subject as an animated place). Kalff's desert is represented by it's most attractive resident. The sturdy cactus plant may express the will to survive in all its independence and prickly self-confindence. Deserts are often erotically connotated. They provide lavish backdrops for fashion shoots. There is no other place on earth where discretion and publicity meet in a similar way. In a desert you may do what ever you like (that is if the climate lets you). No one else will stop you. As an infamous pop song goes: "In the desert you can remember your name / For there ain't no one for to give you no pain". In Kalff's series the red colour and the resemblance with sexual characteristics of both genders emphasise the erotic reading. However it is not a sexuality that urges for a contribution of a partner or partneresse. The 1000 prickly pears appear to be completely self sufficient. This is mirrored by the solitary process of their creation - when nothing else was present in her studio but the music of Jimi Hendrix. Kalff recreated this musical atmosphere when the series premiered with a "Night of the Prickly Pear" in Thor Zimmermann's Cologne gallery. And another series comes to mind when celebrating with a rock 'n' roll dead: Kalff's brilliantly drawn "Totentanz". According to specifications by the United Nations, the deserts of the world increase by 100.000 square meters every year. This is alarming news, but there is always hope in a prickly pear. You may call their ever movement a death dance, a Totentanz. But just the same time we can see them as a celebrations of the infinite variations of life. Even when the environment may look rather deserted. Daniel Kothenschulte is art and film critic at the Frankfurter Rundschau. He teaches art history and film at various institutions such as the Städelschule, Frankfurt/Main and at the Academy of Applied Arts, Dortmund. TEXT for the exhibition: |
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