Gallery Trip to London: Anselm Kiefer and Dexter Dalwood

A recent trip to the Anselm Kiefer exhibition at the Royal Academy provided me with the opportunity to study some of his paintings in greater detail. One of the overbearing aspects that stood out was the fashion in which he uses monochromatic colours and black and white imagery combined with layered and textured surfaces, alongside the sheer scale of the pieces.  

Anselm Kiefer, Black Flakes, 2006, Oil, emulsion, acrylic, charcoal, lead books, branches and plaster on canvas.

'What does the artist do? He draws connections. He ties the invisible threads between things. He dives into history, be it the history of mankind, the geological history of the earth or the beginning and end of the manifest cosmos.' Anselm Kiefer, quote from an interview  before the opening of his exhibition Shevirat Ha-Kelim: The Breaking of the Vessels, Tel Aviv, 2011

History is a recurring theme for Anselm Kiefer, his work references both the world today and events from the past, the contrasting themes of destruction and recreation, violent upheaval and spiritual renewal underpin much of the artist's work.

Anselm Kiefer, The Secret Life of Plants, 2002, Sculptures, lead, oil, chalk, pigment

The landscape is a continuing preoccupation for Kiefer. The snowy and barren landscape is a recurring theme which refers to the landscape of the Holocaust and symbolizes the oblivion and silence that descended over Europe during that period. Kiefer regularly refers to the Biblical incantation:

'Let the earth open.' Isaiah 45:8

Anselm Kiefer, Ash Flower, 1983-97, Oil, emulsion, acrylic paint, clay, ash, earth,and dried sunflower on canvas
  

Kiefer's fractured landscapes convey the life force of germinating plants and the immense rejuvenating energies of the sun. 

'For me ideas aren't up in the sky and materials down in the earth, materials have a spirit that is evoked by the physical presence, which can be accessed and opened up. In the Romantic tradition everything is a kind of universal underground.' The Daily Telegraph, Anselm Kiefer on life, legacy and Barjac: 'I have no style, I'm not a brand' Mark Hudson, 2014

I can relate to many of the elements within Kiefer's fractured, pitted surfaces and monochromatic colours, within my own recent practice. Kiefer is drawn to ruins which he frequently explores through his architectural paintings. The ruin comes to symbolize something persistent that lives on and remains after the physical structure has degraded and crumbled, an emotional record retained within a memory of something that came before. 

A further exhibition I visited during my trip to London was Dexter Dalwood's, London Paintings at the Simon Lee Gallery. This series of works focuses on the capital city presenting a new and unexpected narrative through which to view a seemingly familiar city. Specific London locations and sites are reconstructed from a collage of memory, cultural and political history and subjective association, informed by a consideration of the painted history of the city over a number of years. 
  
'The viewer must use their imagination to complete my images, so I create images that trigger memories, or play upon images they may already have in mind about certain events. I like the idea of painting something that you may know a little about - the date, the place, the person - but that you don't necessarily have a specific image for.' The Guardian, Artist Dexter Dalwood on how he paints, September 2009.

Dexter Dalwood, Half Moon Street, 2014, oil on canvas

Dexter Dalwood, Old Bailey, 2014, oil on canvas

Dexter Dalwood, The Thames Below Waterloo, 2014, oil on canvas

Dalwood's paintings initially start out as small collages and compositions which are assembled by cutting and pasting from magazines and art history pages. Within his often large-scale canvases the abrupt disjunctures and sharp clinical edges are reproduced, preserving an unnerving/jarring quality. 

'Art history runs in a current alongside “real” history but isn’t linked to it. I’m interested in how you pull an artist’s work back into the period when it was made, and how you can connect painting to something you’re involved with, not just art.' Art in America, Dexter Dalwood, David Coggins, 2010

The combination and weaving together of personal, social and political histories alongside art history, popular culture and biography helps to produce provocative and complex new constellations of meaning. 

Dexter Dalwood, London Paintings at the Simon Lee Gallery, 2014

Although radically different in their styles both Kiefer and Dalwood make use of history by re-interpreting and embellishing it. Within their work they have created something which is contemporary and deals directly with themes that are happening now formed as a direct by product of history.

Kiefer manipulates his surfaces by using textures and layers as a way of referencing a past which has been destroyed, discontinued or irrevocably altered. By layering his works with dirt, lead, straw and other materials Kiefer generates a literal 'ground' that has a physical presence and origin within the real world. The scarred and fissured surfaces of his canvases and monochromatic colours create a sense of mourning and melancholy while the overriding sense of destruction and ruin he creates speaks of the importance and preservation of memory as a means of coming to terms with the trauma of human history. 

Dalwood is also interested in trauma and history within his work. However he arrives at a different conclusion to Kiefer on account of the juxtaposition of content within his paintings. Dalwood's approach embodies both the manner and matter of historical memory from which the history of painting is itself inextricable. His paintings suggest an equivalence between real or imagined historical events and historically indexed artistic styles while constructing a system which examines the many lives and deaths of painting.  Dalwood creates a space whose function - purely through its painted reality – is to produce a strong sense of time, site, memory and history – the very things that make up a sense of place.