Lienhard von MonkiewitschDANACH IST DAVOR

“Thoughts from limbo”, this is the heading Carina Plath gives her lucid introductory text, and she continues: “Our conversation while installing the exhibition revolves around the artist’s patricide from 1983 onwards, so often addressed in the texts on Monkiewitsch: the cuts into the Black Square, the icon of Kazimir Malevich; we talk about Protestantism – Lienhard tells of his family, shaped by Protestant pastors, which in the course of history suffered reprisals first in Russia, then in Nazi Germany and later in the GDR, at various times and under various regimes; he also comes out with a few jokes about the Catholics in hell. I counter that the Protestants, for their part, get stuck in limbo – for they are the ones who, neither blessed nor damned, will come to know neither paradise nor perdition. The question of ideologically ‘correct’ art arises: the artist recounts how he had painted photo realistically and was attacked for his elitism; how, after abandoning realism, he found himself under attack again from other people, while still others read the concrete reference to the spatial reality of the floors ideologically as an approach to the viewer.” All this has brought Lienhard von Monkiewitsch to a great equanimity – what has remained, however, is the fundamental mistrust of the teleological impulse of classical modernism. Yet the latter was likewise “responsible for the establishment of the autonomous work of art and thereby also championed freedom of expression, the possibilities of an expansion of perception and the right of the critical viewer. The artist has no wish to give up these achievements and thus finds himself in the difficult position of having to continue writing history without succumbing to it.”

Exhibitions:
Mönchehaus Museum Goslar; 21/3 – 4/7/2021
Sprengel Museum Hannover, 1/4 – 30/5/2021
Galerie vom Zufall und Glück Hannover, 13/11 – 28/11/2021
Städtische Galerie KUBUS Hannover, 13/11–19/12/2021