Deutsches Historisches Museum - Verf�hrung Freiheit. Kunst in Europa seit 1945 - Blog

‘The times we are living in now are not the times for midgets, they are times for giants’, said Dan Perjovschi. In his drawing the masses become a many-headed giant, in order to then disappear in a word ending (or protesting into the street).

Dan Perjovschi laughs as he tells us that he usually fills entire exhibition halls with his drawings. Normally his drawings interact with one another. In our exhibition, on the other hand, his piece, CAPITAL ISM, communicates with the neighbouring works of other artists. To the left is Raymond Hains’s 1964 art work Untitled, which consists of the colourful remains of torn placards mounted on sheet metal. The placards were the Algerian resistance movement’s only chance to make the French public aware of their cause in the 1950s. The activists secretly plastered Paris streets with them to draw attention to the Algerian War.

Perjovschi’s drawing shows the masses going into the street to protest about the economic system. Hains also presents the protest taking place in the streets with the torn placards. The works are joined by their mutual depiction of the most public of all spaces, where we can go to voice our opinion.

To the right is Mária Bartuszová’s Untitled (1987). We see eight rounded plaster shapes placed in two rows of four along opposite edges of a sheet of glass, with strings stretched between them, holding them in place. Bartuszová is thus commenting on the fragile balance of the socialist societies prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Without communicating, they stand in near each other, across from each other. Anyone who cuts the string will fall down, just like the partner across the way. The impossibility of communicating gives an impression of these societies’ complete isolation.

Mária Bartuszová from the Czech Republic and Dan Perjovschi from Rumania have both experienced communist regimes. Bartuszová comments on the missing communication and balance before the change of systems, and Perjovschi speaks out about the situation afterwards.

But he should talk about that himself (and draw, starting at 2:17):