GREETINGS FROM AUSCHWITZ

Paweł Szypulski

Greetings from Auschwitz is an intimate view of the failure of image and language to address the trauma caused by one of the greatest catastrophes in human history. Postcards made after the Nazi death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau became a tourist attraction are assembled by Polish artist and curator Paweł Szypulski in this small, quiet book. Nearly all the postcards reproduced here were once in circulation, written and sent to families, friends and acquaintances. The oldest dates from 1947, only two years after the liberation of the camp. On one—a panorama of the death camp, crematorium chimney and entrance gate, a man wrote “greetings from Auschwitz … Everything is fine, all I miss is you and the sun.” Silence is one of the central themes of Holocaust-related art, and the question of what is appropriate is always crucial. The postcards in Szypulski’s collection illustrate a chatty and inappropriate narrative and deepen the horror.

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JOS DE GRUYTER & HARALD THYS

Die Schmutzigen Puppen von Pommern

Part document, part photographic album, this book by artist duo Jos de Gruyter & Harald Thys captures the sculptural revisionings of the descendants of an executioner family from Greifswald in Pomerania, a historical region on the southern coast of the Baltic Sea. The “dirty puppets” are weary, the clothing worn in by history, their story line deadpan and fable-like. In the twelfth century, the family amassed a fortune through the management and maintenance of the gallow fields; their influence also extended to the judiciary and its decision making. After three generations in power, the empire suddenly and inexplicably collapsed. It was said that the frenzy of executions was the reason for the downfall. The family descendents left to roam Pomerania, relegated to a fate of taunt and mockery.

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KATHARINA GRUZEI

War Rooms

As the setting for WAR ROOMS, Austrian photographer Katharina Gruzei (b. 1983) chose a photographic journey through the halls of Moscow’s Museum of the Great Patriotic War. She turned her gaze away from its large-scale war dioramas to focus on areas of the space in which museum structures and staging strategies become apparent. The large-format images in this oversized artists book both capture the epic scale of war and portray the museum’s pathos-filled murals of wartime activities engaging in absurd dialogue with the museum’s daily functioning. Painted soldiers appear entrenched behind a desk that belongs to the museum staff; a gathered group of military commanders seem to stare at a red phone placed in the room; and, set in the middle of painted battlefields, museum doors suggest an escape route out of war. In this series of images, Gruzei combines fundamental questions about museum staging and the representation of war with a subtle criticism of the institutions themselves.

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ANTJE GUENTHER

What if a counter proof makes any proof an illusion?

To consider beauty as a quality of truth has a very long history, especially within a scientific context. Antje Guenther’s new project questions how aesthetic impulses, as well as the desire to prove, have been influencing the development of theories and hypotheses. Urban photographs of Barcelona, Glasgow and Osaka are combined with full-page reproductions of American photographer Wilson Alwyn Bentley’s photomicrographs of snow crystals. Bentley produced over 5,000 photomicrographs, proving that no two crystals are exactly alike. Guenther closely analyzed Bentley’s book Snow Crystals (1931), which supposedly contained 2,453 different crystals; in it she detected 76 exact crystals reproduced twice and two reproduced three times. In addition to her and Bentley’s black-and-white photographs, Guenther includes text fragments on questions of beauty in science and the concept of supersymmetry. The book, created from her prior installation and projections, is built symmetrically, to visually seduce as well as to carefully compare images for potential evidence.

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Robert F. Hammerstiel

Everything in Best Order

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Robert F. Hammerstiel

All For Your Delight

Verdant greens form soaring cypresses while fruit trees burst across the pages of All for Your Delight. But, are they real? Austrian artist Robert F. Hammerstiel specializes in confronting viewers with motifs from everyday life reconstructed with meticulous forensic accuracy. In his latest exhibition in the massive factory hall of the Museum Angerlehner, the artist not only re-created large green spaces but showed films, photographs and installations as a part of this ongoing five-year series on the commodification of everyday life. Girls and boys, shown here in still frames, were filmed head-on crying into the camera. Rather than “normal” childhood emotion, however, these small actors were booked by an agency and contracted to cry on command. What is the impact of a society that pre-conditions its children to work at so young an age—which pain is more real? In addition to generous reproductions, Hammerstiel’s practice is examined in writings from John Wood, Petra Noll, Michael Ponstingl, Burghart Schmidt and Thomas D. Trummer.

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ANTJE HANEBECK

Sonic

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Egbert Haneke

Vis Motrix

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ALEX HANIMANN

Trapped

Trapped is a massive illustrated book comprised of over 500 snapshots of domestic and exotic animals, mostly taken at night by automatically triggered “camera traps.” Originally taken for scientific purposes in various habitats and climatic zones, Swiss artist and professor, Alex Hanimann (b. 1955), gathers and presents these surreal compositions to raise questions about the authorship and use of digital pictures. By embedding them in the context of art, each highly idiosyncratic shot may be reassessed according to formal artistic criteria such as lighting, cropping and texture, apart from its original purpose of recording animal behavior at night. Despite Hanimann’s contemplative indexing, however, the viewer must grapple with the voyeuristic element of the process. Peering at animals at night in their natural habitats creates a feeling of almost paparazzi intrusion—a stark moment loaded with issues regarding human intervention in nature. With 350 pages overflowing with images, Trapped is engaging right to the end.

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HEIDI HARSIEBER

Insights, Artists and Their Partners

Österreichische Galerie Belvedere (Ed.)

Respected Austrian photographer Heidi Harsieber has been portraying artist couples in their homes with humor, intimacy and psychological subtlety for over a decade, frequently also placing herself under scrutiny. Bruno & Christine Gironcoli, Günter & Ana Brus, Hermann & Rita Nitsch, Peter Weibel & Susanne Widl, Erwin Wurm & Elise Mougin, and Franz West & Tamuna Sirbiladze are just a few examples of the artist couples that have allowed Harsieber to document them in their most intimate surroundings. Through almost 100 color images selected for this elegant limited edition, Harsiebe allows the viewer to easily share in these moments and often experience how different an artist’s home can be to an artist’s studio.With essays by art historian Agnes Husslein-Arco and curator Maria Christine Holter.

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