NOw on view
FILIP HENIN
Is this really me!
2 November – 20 December 2024
Robert Grunenberg is delighted to present the exhibition “Is this really me!” by Filip Henin
FILIP HENIN
Is this really me!
Robert Grunenberg
02.11.2024 – 20.12.2024
IS THIS REALLY ME!, the title of Filip Henin’s second solo exhibition, derives from the last scene of a film that Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis watched on television in 1980 before committing suicide two hours later: “Stroszek”, Werner Herzog’s 1977 film, is a grandiose, melancholic and also comical ballad of failure. It tells the story of Stroszek, a street musician recently released from prison, the prostitute Eva and their old neighbour Scheitz, who flee West Berlin for the USA. They are all outsiders, dreamers, bullied and despised, in search of the American dream. But they cannot withstand the pressure of capitalism. After a failed robbery attempt on a barbershop, Strozek is the only one left, and he flees to a Cherokee reservation. Alone, armed with a rifle, he boards the cable car of a run-down amusement park. On the back of his gondola is this sign: THIS IS REALLY ME! The cable car goes up, turns at the top, and then goes down again. He rides one round before shooting himself. In Herzog’s film, this is an almost Brechtian affair and at the same time a surreal burlesque, to which caged chickens and rabbits at the fair provide the soundtrack with their miniature instruments.
Henin transfers the metaphor of this exhausting cycle, of being broken by a ruthless economic system that gives no chance to outsiders and fragile people, of this last moment when failure and self-knowledge coincide, to the act of painting, to the role of the artist, to the late capitalist art business. Henin is also interested in the fragile, the delicate, the marginalised, the people who do not want to or cannot participate, who are simply left behind. In Henin’s paintings, the figures often dissolve into the grass, into the earth, sleeping like the dead, decomposing or flailing like the skeletons in James Ensor’s satirical paintings. And, as with Herzog, the constant failure is the source of resilience, resistance and creativity. Failure strengthens the will to find one’s own way – or the desire simply to be left alone, like the smoking, non-binary person in ‘A Rest’ (2024).
In Henin’s painting, failure is a very important moment in which the composition or arrangement collapses, like a soufflé, in which you lose sight of the result, get lost, suddenly find yourself in front of something you didn’t want. Failure means that the image, the memories, the emotions take on a life of their own – a flight from the meaningful, from what was meant to be said or painted, a drift into the banal, the embarrassing, the fucked up, the depressive, the perverse. It is precisely these ambivalent moments, which can also mean a breakthrough, that interest Henin. For him, this also means working with exhausted, burdened subjects such as landscape, which is constructed from childhood memories, symbolism and early modernism. Tall, balloon-like or pointed trees, inspired by the poplars of the Eifel in Germany, appear again and again in his paintings, as do gently rising hills or wide horizons.
Then there are the palm trees, the epitome of a warm, tropical climate, of travel, of tourism. Palms are also a symbol of the age of plantations, of colonialism, of what Marxist-feminist anthropologists and theorists such as Donna Haraway and Anna Tsing call the Plantationocene, or Capitalocene. They argue that the climate crisis and global inequality are rooted in the logic of ecological modernisation, homogeneity and control developed on the historical plantations. This logic includes uprooting people, animals and plants from their habitats, transplanting them en masse into a completely different environment, isolating them, ‘alienating’ them and exploiting them industrially. Or to plunder ‘exotic’ cultures, to incorporate styles and stolen works of art into a white modernism.
In paintings such as ‘Stolen from You’ (2024) or ‘Holiday in’ (2004), Henin suggests this context, this exploitation and alienation, which is the historical basis of our culture. At the same time, in his painting, this is an inner, existential state. In Henin’s work, the tops of the palm trees take on a tentacled, insect-like quality, reminiscent of Louise Bourgeois’s Spider Maman. The soft, feminine, non-binary, sexualised lurks and rebels everywhere in these apocalyptic landscapes. They can dry up, look like a bare balloon plantation, be haunted by skeletons as in ‘Play dead’ (2024), flooded as in ‘Thoughts’ (2024).
They can lead to Wagnerian, Freudian depths, as in ‘Sneaking down’ (2024). But it never gets sublime. Planes prepare to land, people cruise, and in ‘If you ask’ people gather at dusk around a car under those strange giant poplars, with a couple having sex in the front seat while a teenager in the back looks indifferently out at the crowd. This American dream is a David Lynch film. Henin’s landscapes are unpredictable, hilarious, precarious. And in this precariousness, they can be incredibly melancholic and beautiful, just as this moment of tipping over is perhaps the end or a revelation.
tain in various shades of brown and highly diluted oil paint and pastel chalk. As the stain is absorbed, the charcoal drawing is pushed forward again, while the oil paint is pushed behind the stain. The bird-like bodies are often indicated by geometric shapes, triangles, rectangles and circles, reminiscent of the Russian avant-garde of the early 20th century, or a do-it-yourself avant-garde after a nuclear fallout. The process of painting creates different, superimposed layers that produce a paradoxical effect. The paintings appear extremely two-dimensional and at the same time suggest spatial depth through the layering.
Zöller reinforces this impression with pasty layers of extremely bright pastel chalk and oil paint that sit almost sculpturally on the canvas. In one painting of a huge, exhausted butterfly, he even glues coloured glass stones to the canvas to enhance the effect. And of course, these layers of colour are also reminiscent of the layers of image editing software.
Zöller transfers the contrast between extreme flatness and depth into space as an installation. The starting point for the architectural elements of the installation is a 3 x 6 metre canvas. 3 x 6 metre canvas.Zöller first paints it with diluted acrylic, then with charcoal, using reduced bodies and nervous, intertwined networks of lines, and then applies the charcoal abrasion with his hands. He then cuts up the canvas. He staples the rectangular fragments in various constellations to a module of MDF panels that blocks the entrance to the exhibition space like a hybrid of wall and bench, or to a free-standing wall in the centre of the exhibition space.
He assembles the pieces of canvas like geometric surfaces to create new patchwork images in which ‘close-ups’ and parts of ‘long shots’ come together to form an abstract montage, similar to a film. At the same time, he creates panel paintings such as ‘Loneliness has a purpose’ (2024), in which the pieces of canvas are sewn together and stretched on a stretcher frame. Here, Zöller leaves spaces between the fragments, which he paints yellow like colour fields or blue to evoke a river. These empty spaces can suggest pauses, as in a composition by John Cage, or perhaps mark an interruption or a break.
Zöller describes a disruptive, precarious world that teeters on the brink of the abyss, yet maintains an almost magical balance. He creates an intellectual and spiritual space to experiment with what one might do or feel in this situation. His paintings mark tipping points, resembling fragile moments that could tip one way or the other at any time. His paintings convey a sense of urgency without becoming sentimental. Painting titles such as ‘Every morning some meditate at a river’ could convey spiritual truth or be placeholders, ‘truisms’. But Zöller never becomes cynical like Kippenberger. He never retreats comfortably into folk- or outsider art His painting does not pretend to know more than the viewer: ‘Uncomfortable Rest’ is the title of one of his paintings. He leaves us in that state. But his painting stays with us, endures this uncertain time with us, hopes for community with us – and that is what makes it so powerful.
Filip Henin was born in Mayen, (DE), in 1986. He lives and works in Berlin, (DE). He studied at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste (University of Fine Arts) in Braunschweig with Walter Dahn.
Opening
01 November 2024
6 – 9 PM
Exhibition on view
02.11.2024 – 20.12.2024
For more information, please contact the gallery: mail@robertgrunenberg.com
This exhibition is supported by
