Lothar Baumgarten : Amazon Cosmos

Lothar Baumgarten: Amazon Cosmos

1 September - 7 October 2021

On view in the lower gallery is a selection of Baumgarten’s early works, such as color photographs from the 1968–72 series Culture-Nature (Manipulated Reality), as well as a number of black-and-white photographs mostly of ephemeral sculptural interventions, including some the artist staged and photographed before his first trip to South America in 1977 in the Rheinaue wetlands not far from his home. As a reptile meets a sink, jungle meets kale, and pyramids meet molehills, it also becomes clear how fragile meaning and representation are and how apparent the structuralist binarism is.

The nearly two-hour film Origin of The Night (Amazon Cosmos) (1973–1977), which references a myth of the indigenous Tupi people, is a meditation on the South American rain forest that was filmed in its entirety along the Rhine near Düsseldorf Airport. In it, the dichotomies of day and night, new and old worlds, and nature and culture unfold glacially and immersively. Only at the very end, in the film’s closing credits, does Baumgarten reveal where the compelling and poetic images were shot.

The photographic essay Eine Reise oder ‘Mit der MS Remscheid auf dem Amazonas’/ Der Bericht einer Reise unter den Sternen des Kühlschranks (A Voyage or ‘with the MS Remscheid on the Amazon’/ The Account of a Voyage under the Stars of the Refrigerator) (1968-1971) combines color and black and white images of Baumgarten’s same ephemeral sculptures from the late 1960s, realized mostly outdoors, with photography and text related to the research of ethnologists Theodor Koch-Grünberg and Guido Boggiani at the turn of the 19th century.

Lothar Baumgarten was born in Rheinsberg, Germany, in 1944 and died in Berlin in 2018. He studied at the Staatliche Akademie für bildende Künste, Karlsruhe (1968) and at the Staatliche Kunstakademie Düsseldorf (1969-71), where he was a student of Joseph Beuys. Between 1978 and 1980, he lived for a period of 18 months among the indigenous Yanõmami people in the Orinoco region, Venezuela. Lothar Baumgarten exhibited internationally and major solo shows have been held in museums such as the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía and the Palacio de Cristal, Madrid, Spain (2016); Fundación Botín, Santander, Spain (2012); Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany (2011); Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria (2009); Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA), Spain (2008); Museum Kurhaus, Kleve, Germany (2006); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, USA (2003); Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg, Germany (2001); National Museum of Modern Art in Kyoto and Tokyo, Japan (1996); Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, USA (1993); Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, USA (1987); Musée National d'Art Moderne - Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France (1987); and ARC/Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, France (1986). 

Lothar Baumgarten also participated in Documenta V (1972), VII (1982), IX (1992), X (1997) and was the recipient of the MFI Prize, Essen, Germany (2003); the Lichtwark Prize, City of Hamburg, Germany (1997); The Golden Lion, First Prize of the 41st Venice Biennale, Italy (1984); the Prize of the State of Nordhein-Westfalen (1976); and the Prize of the City of Düsseldorf, Germany (1974).