Stuttgart. Up until 12 August, the Württembergische Kunstverein in Stuttgart showed a comprehensive solo exhibition, the first of this size, of the artist Anna Oppermann, who died in 1993. This artist, born in 1940 in Eutin, studied graphic design and painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Hamburg and philosophy at Hamburg University. As early as the seventies, she had developed her concept of »ensembles«: large, meandering picture installations that are composed of canvases that are painted on, written on or emulated with photographs, drawings, photographic illustrations, documents, newspaper clippings, objects such as mirrors and various everyday found objects. At first glance, the ensembles seem like a confusing, almost arbitrary jumble of pictures, texts and objects whose inner connections can barely be deciphered and that are held together at the most by the choice of colour and sizes. Deciphering these complex, heterogeneous arrangements costs the viewer time and effort, and demands increased concentration and attention. It calls not only for a close examination of the objects, of the numerous individual large and small pictures in which details of the respective ensemble can be seen in its present or a previous state, but also a shift of the location and the viewpoint to recognise the smallest parts, such as miniature drawings attached to small wooden blocks, or to win a new overall impressions. The works of Anna Oppermann are conceptually informed by movement both in the sense of a rearrangement of the ensembles, which respond to the spatial conditions found in each respective exhibition venue and are adapted to them, and in their continued development over several years owing to the addition of further elements. It is only this basic openness, processual nature and unfinished character of her ensemble art that allows a posthumous »interpreting reconstruction« of the works such the one that has been successfully undertaken in this exhibition curated by Ute Vorkoeper. It is this complexity that from the outset prevents any mere reconstruction in the sense of an »original« reassembly and thus makes necessary different strategies for dealing with new installations and with the preservation and cataloguing of Anna Oppermann’s artistic estate. Up to now, only five works by the artist can be seen in permanent and publicly accessible venues: in the town hall in Altona in Hamburg, in the Hamburg Kunsthalle, in the Hanover Sprengelmuseum and in the Von der Heydt-Museum in Wuppertal. It is all the more welcome, therefore, that the directors of the Württemberg Kunstverein, Iris Dressler and Hans D. Christ, have taken up such a challenge.
The contemporary relevance of Anna Oppermann’s ensembles consists in their hypertextual organisation and their complex blend of images, texts, objects and space. This hypertextuality and hypervisuality incidentally also functions very well on the internet, as the research programme »Hypermedial image, text, video archive on the documentation of complex artefacts of the fine arts« at the Lüneburg University shows in exemplary fashion using the artistic estate of Anna Oppermann, which has been completely preserved. At the same time, her ensembles have origins that can still be recalled, as Anna Oppermann emphasises when talking about her ensemble »Pathosgeste – MGSMO - >Mach Grosze, Schlagkräftige, Machtdemonstrierende Objekte!«, which refers back to an earlier ensemble, »Der ökonomische Aspekt«: »Here it arose from a small still life, consisting of a wooden frame covered with canvas (30x30x30), a tulip petal and a blurred photo of a human figure«, Anna Oppermann writes in a foreword of the brochure on her installation in the Altona town hall in 1991. Oppermann’s ensembles thus have a beginning, but no end: they unfold rhizomatically in and as space; their imagic, textual and object levels intertwine in many different and multi-dimensional ways. Their methodic organisation is not arbitrary, but occurs through a reflective-reactive sampling: »In my ensembles, the different levels of insight are accepted next to one another in their message. The openness of the arrangement allows corrections and modifications, especially as clichés of thought can be undermined by playful confrontations with unusual image-text contents, states and objects«, says Anna Oppermann. Oppermann achieves this undermining of conventional systems of thought, knowledge and order by coming up with complex, subjectively informed taxonomies whose thematic framework in the form of leitmotifs – supplemented by text fragments and quotes – is provided and conveyed by her, but still allows enough room for viewers’ own chains of association and thoughts. As with many other artists, the thematic engagement in Oppermann’s works often revolves around questions of the social importance of art, art production and art presentation, and the status and mission of being-an-artist, as is made clear in the ensemble »KünstlerIn-Seins – Über die Methode 1978 – 1985«, which is to be seen in the exhibition. In a manner analogous to her formal, aesthetic method, these questions and their productive examination do not limit themselves solely to the close-knot system of references of art and the art industry, but point far beyond these on both levels, even if the historical horizon of the ensemble remains recognisable – alone because of the references to the time of production integrated into the ensembles. The fact that Oppermann’s ensembles are not and do not become pure attractions, »mere« works of art, is owing not only to the amount of material and the unfinishability of the ensembles, but also their text and language levels in the form of personal statements, painted catchwords, scraps of words and texts from newspaper articles or quotes from psychoanalysis, philosophy, politics, literature etc.. Here, too, a contemporary relevance of Oppermann’s ensemble art is shown that can be appropriated, since, in the attempt to understand their worlds of images and insights, one becomes aware in the face of today’s abundance of information and non-information that production of knowledge and its conveyance can occur not only in a linear and hierarchical fashion, but rather in an inter- and transdisciplinary way. Oppermann in particular also shows, however, that the basis of such a methodic procedure does not consist in a lack of discipline or arbitrariness, but on the contrary demands the greatest discipline and reflection. The very subjectively driven analysis that Oppermann carries out and unfolds in her ensembles by reproducing, enciphering, taking an ironic viewpoint and questioning, while eluding any art-historical categorisation or one-track interpretation, can thus be read and understood both as a critique and as an alternative to traditional concepts of art and art presentation as well as science and the production of knowledge. In contrast to many other examples and praxes from both fields, art and science, Oppermann does not neglect the »subjective factor«, the enquiring and questioning subject, and integrates it without lapsing into the purely biographical and unambiguous. It is not least this procedure that makes Anna Oppermann’s art so relevant and unique.
Translated by Tim Jones