Anita Groener

 

Texts  from 

Tipping Point | 2010 monograph with texts by Sean Kissane, Curator Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; Robert Pogue Harrison; American author of 'Forests; The Shadow of Civilisation' and Arno Kramer, artist and curator Drawing Centre Diepenheim, The Netherlands. Published by the artist, Rubicon Gallery + West Cork Arts Centre in 2010. ISBN 978-0-9554084-8-9  

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Crossing | 2006 Contributions by Ciaran Benson,Professor of Psychology at University College Dublin;
Patrick T. Murphy, curator and director RHA Gallery, Dublin and Siun Hanrahan, Head of Research, National College of Art and Design Dublin. Published by the RHA Gallagher Gallery in 2006 ISBN 1-903875-29-3

 

Gilgamesh and the Uncanny text by Séan Kissane

In the story Hansel and Gretel, first published by the Brothers Grimm in 1812; a woodcutter and his wife fall on such hard times that the children’s mother suggests that their father take the children into the forest and abandon them there. 

The plot is so familiar that it almost seems to approach the collective unconscious. Overhearing their parents’ conversation, the children leave a trail of bread-crumbs to find their way home. But the birds of the forest eat the crumbs and the children are irretrievably lost in the dark wood. They wander tired, cold and frightened, until they happen upon a wonderful sight, a house made of gingerbread! Alas the house is a trap to lure hungry children set by a cannibalistic witch who plans to eat them! The children are captured, but being resourceful, escape and return to their father with the witch’s wealth. By now, their mother has died and so they all live happily ever after. 

 There is a brutal tangle of metaphor and allegory caught up in this fairy-tale. Evidently misogynistic, it makes uncomfortable connections between hunger and cannibalism motherhood and witchcraft - the concurrent death of mother and witch suggesting that they are, in fact, the same person. But more than this, there is the metaphor of the forest itself. The forest is somewhere to lose oneself, somewhere familiar yet unknowable, alien, unheimlich. It seems prescient that a house is placed in the middle of the forest in the Grimm story, in as much as it anticipates Freud’s uncanny by a century, the gingerbread house being an almost perfect distillation of the un-home-ly. 

 It is some of the tension and anxiety of the uncanny that Anita Groener has engaged in her recent installation Gilgamesh comprising of two large wall-drawings After Casper David Friedrich - Le Chasseur dans la Forêt and Billow In the first work After Casper David Fredrich Groener has rendered a line drawing of the trees, from the eponymous Friedrich painting. It is perhaps co-incidental that the works by Friedrich and Grimm are exactly contemporary (1812 and 1813), but one does offer a reading of the other – the Brothers Grimm reminding us that our twenty-first-century notions of Romanticism need to be tempered with reality – starvation and abandonment being the uneasy bedfellows of beauty and the sublime. 

 The forest, however, is not just a nineteenth-century pre-occupation. Despite the technological advances made by Western civilization, the forest remains other-worldly. In pop culture the forest seems to behave in varied ways. For example, in the movies, Into the Wild and Grizzly Man, men with clearly romantic, almost Rousseauian outlooks, are inevitably consumed by that nature with which they wished to commune. On the other hand are those movies, particularly within the horror genre, that pit man against nature. Much of the horror in a film such as The Blair Witch Project derives from a failure of technology, a torch’s batteries dying heralding a descent into primeval darkness, a place in which the forest returns to an unknowable place of fear and danger. The forest becomes that place onto which civilization projects its innermost anxieties, a condensation of nature vs. culture and man’s hubris in the face of nature. 

 Like the failing light in the forest, in Groener’s work, an analogous evisceration takes place. We see an emptying-out of narrative, of painting, of art history, of the self – and all executed with a certain violence – an unflinching mind and cold hand combining to silence the story emerging from the picture plane. This is something of a paradox as the title of the exhibition draws on the history of storytelling. Gilgamesh refers to one of the earliest stories ever recorded, that of Gilgamesh, a great and brutal king born of the goddess Ninsun of ancient Mesopotamia, it is an epic narrative of heroic deeds, gods and goddesses. Groener’s title suggests the viewer might seek an illustrated account of these events in the works presented, but it soon becomes clear that the title is, in some ways, a decoy or trap, a gingerbread-house of sorts. 

 Groener’s rendering of Friedrich’s painting has removed all human presence. She has subverted Friedrich’s pantheist Naturphilosphie, which sought to spiritually connect nature and culture; nature is no longer subject to man’s (or God’s) lawgiving, but it reasserts its other-ness, its own unique power and timelessness. It is useful to read this assertion as cultural metaphor. Just as art has, over the past decades, shaken off the shackles of easy interpretation – contemporary artists like Groener explore different territories and map them in new ways. 

 This is borne out by the second and larger wall-drawing entitled Billow, it is executed in black pigment and forming an oval shape reminiscent of a finger-print, with concentric, biomorphic lines. A sense of balance and equilibrium exists between these apparently differing wall-drawings. While After Casper David Friedrich - Le Chasseur dans la Forêt appears to be based on a prior narrative of which Billow appears devoid, it becomes clear that the artist is actually pointing to their shared object-ness. As one’s eye settles over the scenes presented, the regularity, symmetry and evenness of the marks assert themselves; the figuration falls away as the patterns affirm their presence.  

 It is somewhat inevitable that a wall-drawing should come to be read as anti-narrative. Informed by the practices of Sol LeWitt or the reductivist Niele Toroni, these artists insist on the materiality of their medium and the extent to which it must remain ‘visible and legible’ (Toroni). Groener has certainly adopted this classical Conceptual position but only, it seems, as another device with which to render a contemporary viewpoint. Metaphorically, her intention comes in and out of focus; as with Pointillism, the reading of the work depends on the viewer’s position – stand too close and one only sees a group of dots, stand back a few paces and the figuration reasserts itself. It is a confounding experience, an apparently simple statement reveals itself as complex and elaborate. It is here that Groener’s use of the forest-as-metaphor enters a clearing. In as much as art made today is informed by post-structuralism – that, in itself, obfuscates rather than enlightens the path towards understanding – the multiple voices implicit in every act and action blur the space between viewer and object. But there is a shift as we again see Groener’s reiteration of the mark, the mark being the thing – das Ding. 

 Groener’s marks, when read through Freudian or Lacanian systems, can be seen to exist either outside language and the unconscious (das ding), or as representations which form part of the symbolic order (die Sache). This is helpful in as much as it creates a structure within which the constant shifts in Groener’s imagery can be qualified. When we read Billow as an abstract drawing, or a gathering of marks, it functions comfortably within an art-historical trajectory. But if we shift our consciousness slightly, Billow becomes distinctly figurative, like Hitchcock’s The Birds, a representation of the unmanageable and untamed aspects of the unconscious mind.  When we examine some of the collective nouns for birds in the English language, their potential for psychoanalytic exploitation seems even more potent: a siege of bitterns, a murder of crows, an unkindness of ravens. In the specific context of Hitchcock’s movie, various themes about the mother/daughter relationship; bourgeois culturisation; and nature vs. culture –seem to resonate with Groener’s prior and current interests. 

 It is here that Groener’s appropriation of Gilgamesh to title her drawing installation settles into place. Storytelling, with its characteristics of interpersonal communication, embroidery of language, improvisation and adaptation, and most importantly, universality, fits the works in this exhibition in telling ways. By means of its sheer mutability, it communicates numerous sensations and polarities: figuration vs. abstraction, narrative vs. formalism, esoteric vs. exoteric. It is this mutability that can be seen as Groener’s focus in her search for visual narratives without a story. 

Quite often, drawing is a curiously deliberate process of creative derailing. No matter how much the artist believes that she has absolute control over the image coming into being, a moment arrives when this sense of control breaks down. While the meaning of any work of art is a topic for ongoing speculation, drawing in particular is generally approached hesitantly and circumspectly.

Theorizing about the art of drawing is complicated, perhaps, because it is the most intimate and personal form of expression among the visual arts. What can be said about the hand that moves across the surface of the paper? Does the mark, created spontaneously, become an integral part of the meaning of the image? Does the derailing line, incorporated in the work, contribute to its ultimate quality? More than any other discipline, drawing bears witness to a process that now frequently originates from a particular theoretical perspective, though it often arrives at a point where sensibility seems to take over from technique, thus energising and animating the work of art. The more tangible inspiration and vision become, the more difficult it is to define them.

Anita Groener’s work derives its significance in part from exposing the analysis of the process of drawing. We can appreciate her singular drawings for their vision, their quality, and their sensibility, yet virtually all the images in any one series represent a view from a specific vantage point. The title of each series points towards the origin of her vision, the diverse drawings showing visual parallels, while each individual drawing can equally be appreciated as an autonomous work. The immediate power of the work is derived from the artist’s preference for using ink, suggesting “colour” in its tonality by condensing finely-drawn lines; this high level of quality is retained in her most recent wall drawings. Groener explores the tipping point between the open-ended and the clearly defined in her drawings, in the same way that she explores the boundaries of what is recognisable and abstract in her work.

Each work is in search of a moment in which the tension of a sequence of lines converges with a sense of structure and form. These drawings are never ill-defined, or of an easy charisma. On the contrary, they reveal such autonomous power that each series remains fascinating, so that we keep musing over their titles, and, subsequently, on their subject matter. Groener’s work engages us in a process in which our own experiences and perceptions help constitute the meaning of the image, and in which the scope of the work is stretched between the tensions of figuration and abstraction.

A drawing is the basis of hope, of a revelation, of a perspective. Groener creates this perspective by means of her individual script of miniscule lines (an abstraction, a form) with a tendency to undermine values, to break away from them, before establishing a new order. Not always clearly visible to others, she proceeds in small steps, during which a line in a drawing may be derailed to such an extent that the artist herself realises that something significant has happened. Accepting this derailing for its effective and symbolic quality, Groener seizes the moment when these drawings have reached a meaningful visual. Once she decides that the drawings have reached a state of conclusion, the viewer must take over to complete their meaning.

 

Over tekenen | tekst van Arno Kramer

Het maken van een tekening is in veel gevallen niet meer en niet minder dan het uitlokken van een ontsporing. Hoe gecontroleerd de kunstenaar zijn beeld ook ontwikkelt, er komt een moment dat de controle niet meer belangrijk lijkt om een tekening te voltooien. Er werd en wordt eindeloos gespeculeerd over wat kunstwerken in het algemeen zouden kunnen betekenen en hoe ze te duiden zouden zijn, maar juist over het tekenen is in veel gevallen wat aarzelend en meanderend geschreven. 

Misschien is het zo moeilijk om over het tekenen te theoretiseren, omdat het de meest intieme en persoonlijk uitdrukkingsvorm in de beeldende kunst is. Wat valt er te zeggen over de hand die beweegt over het papier? De vlek die spontaan ontstaat en deel wordt van een werk? De lijn die inderdaad ontspoort maar deel wordt van het werk en bijdraagt aan de uiteindelijke kwaliteit van de tekening? Tekeningen zijn vooral getuigenissen van processen, die tegenwoordig vaak een theoretisch startpunt kunnen hebben, maar er komt ook dikwijls een moment dat de sensibiliteit het lijkt over te nemen van de techniek en dan komt de geest en het leven in een werk. Bezieling en visie worden voelbaar en hoe meer die voelbaar worden, hoe lastiger ze zich laten omschrijven.    

Het werk van Anita Groener heeft mede zijn betekenis gekregen in de analyse van het proces dat ze zichtbaar maakt. Natuurlijk kun je enkelvoudige werken waarderen om hun visie, hun kwaliteit en hun sensibiliteit, maar toch worden vrijwel alle reeksen vanuit een bepaalde stellingname gemaakt. “Overall” titels van de series geven aan waar het beginpunt van die visie ligt. Dat er in de diverse werken beeldende parallellen liggen spreekt dan bijna vanzelf, maar elke tekening laat zich toch ook bijzonder goed als autonoom werk bekijken en ervaren. De directe kracht die in het werk ligt heeft te maken met de voorkeur voor het gebruik van inkt, waardoor er in toon alleen de suggestie van een “kleur” kan komen door verdichting van de minutieus opgezette inktlijnen. Zelfs in de laatste grote wandtekeningen blijft die kwaliteit gehandhaafd. Het lijkt veeleer of Groener een spel speelt met de verkenning van waar en wanneer de tekening op de grens van het sensibele en het statische nu precies verkeert, zoals ook de grens van het herkenbare en het abstracte wordt verkend. Binnen de serie heeft elke tekening ook weer, op basis van zijn eigen beeldende kwaliteit, zijn plek veroverd.

Elk werk is een zoektocht naar het moment waarin de spanning van een hoeveelheid lijnen raakt aan een gevoel voor structuur en vorm. De tekeningen zijn nooit wazig of goedkoop mystiek. Integendeel. Er straalt een dermate autonome kracht vanuit dat elke serie steeds weer blijft fascineren en je ook over de titels, en dus thematiek, aan het denken wordt gezet. Groener’s werk trekt je mee in een proces waarin de betekenis van het beeld volbracht wordt door de eigen ervaringen en belevingen van de kijker en waarin tevens de draagwijdte van het beeld uitgerekt wordt met een spanning tussen figuratie en abstractie. Een tekening is de basis voor hoop, voor een openbaring van een perspectief. Met minuscule lijnen wordt dit perspectief  getekend in het handschrift (een abstractie, een vorm) van de kunstenaar met een neiging van eerst afbreken van waarden, dan uitbreken en vervolgens werken naar een nieuwe orde.  Het zijn soms nauwelijks voor anderen waar te nemen stapjes die Anita Groener zet, maar voor de kunstenaar kan een lijn al dusdanig “ontsporen” dat ze beseft dat er iets belangrijks is gebeurd. De aanvaarding van die ontsporingen, die effectief en soms symbolisch hebben gewerkt, worden door Anita Groener beoordeeld op het feit of dit de tekening naar een veelbetekenend beeldend plan heeft gebracht. Dan kan zij besluiten dat het klaar is en kunnen wij kijkers aan het werk. 

 

 

From Here to Where? Roads as Metaphors for Self & the Work of Anita Groener | essay by Ciarán Benson 2006

Of the many metaphors that comprise and shape selfhood, and of the many images we deploy to think about ‘self’, that of ‘self as road’ is surprisingly uncommon. Even when we shift our attention to the idea of ‘time’ and consider self as a process that unfolds and enfolds over time, the metaphor of self as road retains its rarity while at the same time remaining implicit in a still more abstract concept which philosophers have called ‘The Moving Time Metaphor.’1 Time is here imagined as ‘objects’ which ‘move past’ an observer. Where the observer is located is understood as the present, the space ‘in front’ of the observer is the future and the space ‘behind’ is the past. The idea of the ‘passage of time’ is then understood as the motion of objects past the observer ‘from’ the future ‘through’ the present ‘to’ the past.

So ingrained is this metaphor of time in our ways of structuring reality, and of constructing our ‘selves’ as subjects of this reality, that we need to be reminded that it is a metaphor and not ‘literally’ true. It is just one amongst a number of ways for fabricating our concept of time.

If we now think of self, in all its complexity, as a process or as a project then we must somehow map this idea of self onto our metaphors of time. This we can do verbally or, as Anita Groener does, visually. In doing this she uses the idea of ‘The Moving Observer’ which Lakoff and Johnson have called the second major metaphor for time.2 Doing this leads us to think of time as locations in a landscape. As the observer ‘passes’ these locations so we are led to think of the observer’s motion as the ‘passage’ of time and of the distance between the observer and those locations in the landscape as the ‘amount’ of time ‘passed’. These metaphors arise from our most basic experiences of being in the world and they recur in languages throughout the world. It does not seem to be possible to think about ‘time’ without using such metaphors. 

But do such metaphors have to find their exclusive expression in natural lang  uages? Work like Groener’s suggests that the answer to this is that visual languages can build upon natural language metaphors, and then re-present them in the particular way that pictorial modes so excel, namely as expressions to be apprehended simultaneously rather than serially, as is the case in natural languages which necessarily unfold over time.

For the ancient Greeks, their level but unpaved roads served to connect cities with religious centres and to enable trade. The great network of Roman roads primarily served military and political functions.3 The best of them were up to five metres wide, often paved, in straight lines marked by milestones. Notwithstanding such sophistication, the river maintained its edge on the road in ancient traditions as the likely metaphor for the passage of life.4 In modern times the road becomes dominant, signifying the cultural transformation of the natural. More than that, being ‘on the road’ has, after Jack Kerouac, become a potent contemporary metaphor for self-knowledge and also a suggested means of gaining it. Yet roads retain a deeper connection to the more ancient symbol of the river via the properties of water.

Groener’s pictorial work shares that deep connection with contemporary music such as that of the American composer John Adams.5 In the sleeve notes to his own 2004 Road Movies (for piano, pianos, and violin), Adams speaks of his music in ways that resonate with Groener’s reflections on the connections between roads and her self. Adams speaks of this music as ‘travel music’ which ‘passes through harmonic and textural regions as one would pass through a landscape on a car trip’; there are movements of ‘almost motionless contemplation’ and others which shift ‘into high gear with syncopated accents making the surface bump and stutter with unexpected shifts and swerves’; there is ‘the possibility of having similar or even identical material played at a very slight delay, thereby creating a kind of planned resonance’; the acoustically identical sounds of two pianos constantly changing the pulse of the music ‘provide a kind of giddy uncertainty to the forward motion’; and, finally, the 2001 piece American Berserk has a surface which ‘is studded with sudden twists and curves and punctuated with unexpected stabs of syncopation and unpredictable , bipolar shifts of mood and tempo’. One key source for some of Adams’ pieces was the regular, infinitely modulated motions of waves on a sea surface giving rise to ‘ripples’, ‘regularities’ and ‘undulations’ in the music.

It is no accident that the language of a composer could so readily be transposed to the pictorial work of Anita Groener. This is because both Adams and Groener are exploring the abstract expressive possibilities of the road in contemporary culture as a fertile source for representing the temporal structure of our lives as each and every one of them moves inexorably forward towards its own ultimate destination(s). If music can sometimes sound like its referents (when, that is, it has them), then by analogy some pictorial art might exhibit a kind of visual onomatopoeia. Self understood as a journey, as on a road, offers pictorial opportunities such as these: somewhere to start and somewhere to finish; passages of movement which curve back on themselves, perhaps tangling into knots which hamper forward movement; knots unravelling and once again releasing energies for forward movement, albeit in repetitive spirals or snaking curves; many roads on many levels ultimately coalescing, from the perspective of a backward glance, into one large meandering road which seems to stop where – here! – as though Fate or Destiny always intended it to be so; mistakes made are left to remain where they were made; and, from the enclosed inwardness of those pictures without horizons, the return of the horizon in the later work, with its allowances for what might lie beyond, sounds a quiet unsentimental optimism as the register of Crossing.

Groener’s roads, while all the time relying on human presence, have no humans present other than her unrepresented self. They are roads of quiet solitude. Achieving this sense of calm and quiet silence is her criterion for success in this work. It is not insignificant that she especially loves the light just before dawn. This is for her a luminous realm of ambiguity when everything once again begins to retake visible form, just as it always has done in the endlessly repetitive rhythms of life. At that moment, one quietly waits for things to happen. Those hints of colour which return to her work, which is largely composed in a chromatic range from black to grey white, appear like the faint hues of dawn to mark a very personal sense of where her own road is taking her.

 

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