E-Book, Dutch, Flemish, Englisch, 180 Seiten
Hoek / Grandjean / Limpt Magdalena Abakanowicz. Human Nature
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-3-7757-6147-5
Verlag: Hatje Cantz Verlag
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
E-Book, Dutch, Flemish, Englisch, 180 Seiten
ISBN: 978-3-7757-6147-5
Verlag: Hatje Cantz Verlag
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
Magdalena Abakanowicz (1930–2017) is known for her iconic installations that explored the relationship between humanity and nature, as well as the strength of the collective versus the individual. Today the power of her art, like predications from the past, are rivetingly real. This publication offers rich intellectual insight into the relevance of this Polish artist to the threatened present—a time in which geopolitical shifts between East and West and predictions of the Club of Rome (1972) and climate scientists are becoming a worldwide reality. And here Abakanowicz’s vision on nature and the human condition is explored in a uniquely inspired way: by engaging seven artists/collaboratives to reflect in deeply personal ways on their art through dialogues with historians, philosophers, and other thinkers. This “counterpoint" launches discussion around the human condition in a post-humanist time, collective identity, trauma, climate change, unending destruction of the planet, and more. Finally, the uncommon approach of this show and book demonstrates how the elder artist’s art and life is a lens through which not only these artists but we can reconsider our place in the world.Magdalena Abakanowicz (1930–2017) is known for her iconic installations that explored the relationship between humanity and nature, as well as the strength of the collective versus the individual. Today the power of her art, like predications from the past, are rivetingly real.
Autoren/Hrsg.
Fachgebiete
- Geisteswissenschaften Kunst Kunstformen, Kunsthandwerk Textilkunst
- Geisteswissenschaften Kunst Kunstformen, Kunsthandwerk Installations-, Aktions-, Computer- und Videokunst
- Geisteswissenschaften Kunst Kunst, allgemein Ausstellungskataloge, Museumsführer
- Geisteswissenschaften Kunst Kunstformen, Kunsthandwerk Bildhauerei, Plastik, Denkmäler
- Geisteswissenschaften Kunst Kunst, allgemein Einzelne Künstler: Biographien, Monografien
- Geowissenschaften Umweltwissenschaften Angewandte Ökologie
Weitere Infos & Material
Cover
Half Title Page
Title Page
Contents
Foreword
Counterpoints
A Dialogue between Anish Kapoor and Jacquelynn Baas
A Dialogue between Kimsooja and Ann Coxon
Diana Thater and Magdalena Abakanowicz in Human Nature – Chernobyl’s Reflection
Magdalena and Magdalena: Individual Versus Group in the Work of Marlene Dumas and Magdalena Abakanowicz
A Dialogue between Kader Attia and Joanna Bourke
A Dialogue between Kristina Benjocki & Stijn Verhoeff and Marika Kuzmicz
A Dialogue between Nicole Beutler and Monika Bakke
Epilogue
Timeline
Biographies
List of Works
Dutch Translations Nederlandse vertaling
Colophon
Cover
Half Title Page
Title Page
Contents
Foreword
Counterpoints
A Dialogue between Anish Kapoor and Jacquelynn Baas
A Dialogue between Kimsooja and Ann Coxon
Diana Thater and Magdalena Abakanowicz in Human Nature – Chernobyl's Reflection
Magdalena and Magdalena: Individual Versus Group in the Work of Marlene Dumas and Magdalena Abakanowicz
A Dialogue between Kader Attia and Joanna Bourke
A Dialogue between Kristina Benjocki & Stijn Verhoeff and Marika Kuzmicz
A Dialogue between Nicole Beutler and Monika Bakke
Epilogue
Timeline
Biographies
List of Works
Dutch Translations Nederlandse vertaling
Colophon
jacqueline grandjean Counterpoints
Nederlandse vertaling op pagina 154 / Dutch translation on page 154
The exhibition Magdalena Abakanowicz: Human Nature features five counterpoints – one in each gallery – that serve as counterforces to the work of Magdalena Abakanowicz. Her practice is examined and revisited from the perspective of today’s reality, set against the backdrop of renewed tensions and war in Europe, urgent environmental concerns, and accelerating (bio)technological developments. This is done through an interhistorical curatorial approach, briefly outlined below. Following this, each counterpoint is discussed individually, as connections that arise from juxtaposing works by artists from different generations. This approach is intended to open new perspectives on the art of Abakanowicz.
Bringing together works from different periods, generations, and contexts within a single space is a long-established practice in both collections and exhibitions.1 Since the early twentieth century, museums around the world have increasingly chosen to display works of art from various time periods side-by-side. Exhibitions that combine works from diverse art-historical and cultural contexts connect art across different eras and generations. Through this, curators aim to question and expand conventional frameworks such as influence, chronology, context, inspiration, and categorization.2 This method is often described as transhistorical: bringing past and present together to highlight connections across time and to uncover resonances and parallels.3 It moves beyond strict, linear art historical chronology.
Literary scholar and cultural theorist Mieke Bal argues that deliberately embracing anachronisms can draw works of the past closer – not as relics of a bygone era, but as active participants in conversations about contemporary culture. This approach does not erase temporal distinctions; rather, it invites reflection on how we interpret the past. It sharpens our perspective on what precedes us. Anachronisms can revitalize our engagement with art from earlier centuries and decades, offering fresh ways to answer the questions of the past by relating them to the present. Bal refers to this approach as interhistorical rather than transhistorical. While transhistorical simply traverses time – placing the past and the present side by side – interhistorical emphasizes a reciprocal relationship between them. It is conceived as an active dialogue between history and contemporary culture.4 Through this exchange, our understanding of both the past and the present can be reshaped or transformed.
Mieke Bal introduces the term enchantment to describe the impact that non-chronological, non-dogmatic exhibitions can have on viewers. This enchantment is not a form of manipulative seduction, as it relies on a voluntary act of surrender. Yet it enables viewers to temporarily let go of the constraints that shape their everyday lives. By releasing the grip of linear time, space is created for new ways of seeing and experiencing. ‘As a consequence of this enchantment’, Bal writes, ‘we feel enriched and are therefore better able to reconsider fixed restrictions in a creative way.’ In this sense, art becomes an important agent in the (utopian) impulse to change the world.5
The exhibition Magdalena Abakanowicz: Human Nature is structured according to this interhistorical method, in which works from different periods form a web of connections. This approach can be applied in several ways.6 For this exhibition, it was realized through the introduction of counterforces or counterpoints: works by artists from later generations that either amplify, challenge, or complicate the meanings embedded in Abakanowicz’s work.
Art by Anish Kapoor, Kimsooja, Diana Thater, Marlene Dumas, Kader Attia, Kristina Benjocki & Stijn Verhoeff, and Nicole Beutler is presented alongside Abakanowicz’s work, inviting reflection on shared concerns and divergent perspectives. Despite generational and contextual differences, each work creates both parallels and productive tensions around the central theme of human nature, underscoring the continued resonance of Abakanowicz’s practice. The constellation of contemporary works generates meanings that stand independently, while also fostering the possibility of enchantment, as Bal describes it – a way of engaging that calls for the viewer’s active openness and surrender.
The selection of these counterpoints was guided by a combination of visual affinities – with Abakanowicz’s work serving as a kind of visual and conceptual compass – and the thematic questions each piece evokes. In many cases, conversations with the artists shaped and refined the selection process.
As a counterpoint to Abakan Red (1969) – a work that reveals itself as a kind of hermaphroditic flower – Anish Kapoor’s (Mumbai, 1954) Void (1992) forms a striking visual and conceptual dialogue. Abakan Red is organic, physical, and erotic. It embodies dualities: on one side, its rounded form features lobes suggestive of a vulva; on the other, a protruding spike points forward, while the lobes beneath it hint at the shape of a scrotum. Like a flower containing both stamens and pistils, the work merges male and female elements into a single, fertile form.
Visually, there is an immediate connection with Void. The hollow of Kapoor’s sculpture appears to patiently receive the tip of Abakanowicz’s spike – a gesture of saturation and completion. Like Abakan Red, Kapoor’s work plays with the tension between interior and exterior. In this sculpture, a void is surrounded by a funnel shape. The unfathomable interior is as significant as the exterior.
For Kapoor, emptiness is not a void in the sense of absence, but a space brimming with latent potential. As he describes it: ‘That is what interests me: the void, the moment when this is not a hole but a space full of that which is not there.’7 Depth may provoke unease, boredom, fear – or, conversely, it can inspire faith and (sexual) desire. For Abakanowicz, emptiness represents a visible absence. The gaps and openings she leaves in the textile create spaces for viewers to see through, reach through, and even move through. Her intention was always that viewers would touch the work, physically engage with it, and momentarily occupy the empty space within. The absence thus becomes filled with the presence of the human body.
In terms of materiality, the soft fibres of Abakan Red stand in stark contrast to the fibreglass of Kapoor’s work. Yet, on closer inspection, light emerges as a crucial element in both pieces. Abakan Red inevitably casts a large, commanding shadow within the space, while Kapoor’s sculpture appears to evade both shadow and light entirely. Its absence of reflection creates a sensation of infinity – an unfathomable void. At first glance, this sense of infinity seems absent from the Abakan, unless the work is set in motion. As Magdalena Abakanowicz observed: ‘When moved, they responded with the sleepy rhythm of a sea wave, which repeats the same heavy action over and over. I thought that only waves were capable of this movement. The Abakans were capable of the same. I revelled in this discovery.’8
The Bottari (2018 and 2022) by artist Kimsooja (Daegu, 1957) may initially seem to come from an entirely different universe. Yet through their spherical form, they establish an immediate visual resonance with Abakanowicz’s work. Bottari are bundles of essential personal belongings, wrapped in bedcovers, that Korean people prepare when forced to relocate. They are symbols of transition, displacement, and migration. The thematic connection between Kimsooja’s Bottari and Abakanowicz’s War Games lies in their shared memory of war and the experience of flight. In August 1944, amid the chaos of warfare, Abakanowicz fled with her family to Warsaw. As she recalled: ‘I do not remember the beginning, the firing from all sides, mother and the two of us were lying in the street. Later, everyone was running, we too. Suddenly I was alone in a crowd of people. Strange faces. I shouted: Mama, Terenia!’9 Kimsooja’s own childhood was similarly shaped by displacement. As the daughter of a soldier, her youth was marked by constant moves, with frequent farewells to friends, family, and familiar places. In Korean culture, Bottari carry the collective memory of a nation repeatedly uprooted by war and poverty.
Visually, the spherical form of the Bottari recurs frequently in Abakanowicz’s work. Nearby, for example, in Tapisserie 23 en violet et noir (1963), the resonance is clear. From her early practice onwards, spheres regularly appear in her collages, painted textiles, charcoal drawings, and two-dimensional tapestries. The Black Balls (1986–1988) displayed in this exhibition are further evidence of her long-standing engagement with the spherical form. In Europos Parkas near Vilnius, Abakanowicz even placed groups of spherical forms within a forest and named the installation Space of Unknown Growth (1998).
In the work of both Kimsooja and Abakanowicz, the sphere functions as a powerful symbol. It conveys unity and wholeness, while simultaneously evoking dynamism and movement. A sphere always contains both an interior and an exterior. While the exterior is open to view, the interior remains hidden – or, in the case of Bottari, physically unopened. The inside is accessible only through the power of human imagination. As Abakanowicz once remarked:...
