Assaf Gruber
JERUSALEM, ISRAEL, 1980
Assaf Gruber’s work, developed in the context of The Botín Visual Arts Grant is a result of his ongoing investigation of how politics intersect with art and its institutions. It reveals the human stories and shifting ideological values at the “back-end” of cultural institutions. This time Gruber’s artistic research main ‘protagonist’ is the avant-garde art collection of Egidio Marzona, which comprises nearly 1.5 million items, including some of the most canonic artworks of the 20th century by artists such as Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp and El Lissitzky.
Recently part of Marzona’s collection and its entire archive were donated to the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden (SKD) and became the Archive of the Avant Gardes (AdA). The SKD is a complex of 15 museums characterised by its lavish Baroque architecture and artefacts from all over the globe with a unique monarchic historical presence, as its heart- the Green Vault [Grünes Gewölbe] – is the first museum opened to the wide public in Europe in the 18th century to manifest the wealth and power of the of Elector of Saxony and king of Poland- Augustus II the Strong.
The core of the oeuvre is the docufiction film Transient Witness, an essay that simultaneously merges and obscures the intimate from the public in a story where the actions of collecting and appropriation function as synonyms and where inheritance and loss engage. It unfolds a complex fictional story, navigating between historical facts about the Baroque and the avant-garde; art and its politics. It is an imagined plot about the transfer of the objects from the private house of Marzona in Berlin to their new domicile – the Japanisches Palais, a Rococo building that belongs to the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden (SKD). The narrative is told through the eyes of three main characters: Christina, the manager of the collection; Maurizio, the art mover; and Präsens, the collector’s dog.
The film takes place on November 25, 2019. On that day, priceless jewelry of immense cultural value was stolen from the Green Vault in Dresden in one of the biggest art heists in history, causing shockwaves to ripple through Germany.
In Itinerarios XXVII Gruber presents two other artworks that grew during the production of the film:
The sculpture Präsens abstractly unites the common features and inevitable distinctions of Baroque and avantgarde that coexist within the collections of SKD. Its preliminary inspiration is the prominent appearance of rare red corals in the collection of the Green Vault. The most famous red coral object is the statue of the Greek nymph Daphne, crafted by silversmith Abraham Jamnitzer in the late 1580s. Today, the central digital database of the SKD bears her name. The lower part of Gruber’s sculpture, silver-plated bronze, echoes with the corals – living creatures that have been hunted for centuries only to become valuable luxury objects and to represent economic and political power. The upper part of Präsens, painted wood, is shaped in the form of the famous Soviet sickle, which was the symbol of the Bolsheviks and the state symbol of the Soviet Union and was used in many early twentieth century avant-garde artworks by artists such as El Lissitzky.
The photo series Movement, shot inside the Green Vault with a selection of photographs from the Archiv der Avantgarden (AdA), combines images of leftist demonstrations and protests with true corals from the Green Vault. The photos, taken in West Germany during the time of the Berlin wall, document solidarity with the East and resistance towards the Western world. In Gruber’s artwork, photos and corals change their places, sometimes being the main focus and sometimes moving to the background, but always in dialogue with one another; a movement that embodies the paradoxical meanings, shadows and scars that exist in- and outside archives and collections.
The ensemble of works confronts art museums with their future role in society through their metamorphosing present and unexpected past.
