We are very pleased to announce the first solo show of Marc Bauer at our gallery!

Marc Bauer, born in Geneva in 1975, lives and works in Berlin at present. He received his education at the Ecole Supérieure d’Art Visuel in Geneva (1995-1999) and was artist in residence on several occasions: 2002-2004 at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten in Amsterdam, 2005-2006 at the Swiss Institute in Rome, and in 2006 at Ai Weiwei’s studio in Beijing (residency GegenwArt_Museum Berne). Bauer is triple winner of the Swiss Art Awards (2001, 2005, 2006) and was awarded the Videoex-Price in Zürich.

Room 1, Installation view

Bauer uses drawing, done in graphite and charcoal, as the ideal medium to examine matters of collective and personal memory as well as relationships based on force and domination. Through a subtle blend of miscellaneous sources such as archival images, family pictures and his own childhood remembrances he builds up an intense narration, which reflects the perception of reality. In his own words: “Reality is what we perceive from our immediate environment, that is a mental construction. History and morality are also construction. We need to have a coherent History; therefore, we try to link all the events in a perspective to build up a coherent 'narrative'. Our History, our scale of values, our way of thinking are irrational.”

out of 'Gegen mein Gehirn_Todtnauberg, pencil and black pen, 45 x 32 cm

The starting point of his new installation featured in 'Gegen mein Gehirn' is the meeting between the Jewish poet Paul Celan and the German philosopher Martin Heidegger - former member of the NSDAP – in Heidegger’s hut in Todtnauberg, Black Forrest, South Germany in 1967. We don’t have pictures of this incident because Celan, a victim of Nazism who lost his parents in concentration camps and who was deported himself in 1942, refused to appear on a photograph with Heidegger who declined insistently to comment on his political past in public. Only a few lines in the visitor’s book (Ins Hüttenbuch, mit dem Blick auf den Brunnenstern, mit der Hoffnung auf ein kommendes Wort im Herzen. Am 25. Juli 1967) and a poem (‘Todtnauberg’) which he wrote four days later, bear witness of the encounter and of Celan’s hope for Heidegger's avowal.

Room 2, installation view

The first room echoes the memories of destruction and atrocity alongside with an extract of a poem by Gottfried Benn who was also the author of the exhibition title 'Gegen mein Gehirn'.
The second room focuses on the meeting itself and is related to Celan’s sentence "Ins Hüttenbuch, mit dem Blick auf den Brunnenstern, mit der Hoffnung auf ein kommendes Wort im Herzen“. A set of drawings traces back the chronology and tries to image what has never been pictured. They are confronted with 17 text fragments chosen by Christine Abbt* which centre on the discourse of the unsaid.
The exhibition ends in the third room with the focal point on Celan’s suicide in Paris in 1970.

'Gegen mein Gehirn' is an encounter between victim and offender, between the spoken and the unspoken word, between reality and fiction, between image and text, between Marc Bauer and Christine Abbt. Bauer appropriates History in its helpless and destructive character with relentless pencil-gestures and creates an atmosphere of unique forcefulness.

Denise Frey

Books and catalogues are availlable at the gallery.
For visual material please contact info@elisabethkaufmann.com

* academic assistant and tutor at the Philosophisches Seminar, University Zürich.

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