Via Lewandowsky directs a sharp wit towards the remnants of the system he remembers from his childhood in 1970s Dresden. This edition introduces the German artist's installation "Applause," employing 96 concert loudspeakers in which 100 prominent figures cheer on an invisible performance; it also includes a survey of Lewandowsky's sound-related projects from the 1990s.
Published by Hatje Cantz. Text by Durs Grünbein, Joachim Jäger, Christoph Tannert, Constanze von Marlin, Ivo Wessel, Christoph Zuschlag.
Berlin-based artist Via Lewandowsky, born in 1963, came to international attention at Documenta IX, and more recently with a piece commissioned by the German Ministry of Defense, an aerial view of Berlin showing the devastation of World War II. Paeninsular presents his most recent works, devoted to overturning ordinary logic with visual and conceptual play. Lewandowsky's complicated installations are often determined, down to the smallest detail, by irony and deception, examining the idiosyncrasies of the German language and its visual interpretations. For example, the German word "schrankwand" (wall unit) becomes an object in which a wall and a cupboard penetrate one another such that a door in the wall stands half-open in the cupboard. His title, Paeninsular, which uses geography figuratively, suggests a world in which one is always slightly disoriented and can never be sure how to find (literally speaking) the mainland or (conceptually speaking) the final meaning of this teasing work.
Via Lewandowsky: Paeninsular