Ausstellung von Gregor Hildebrandt

Ausstellung 26.10. - 09.12.17

Ort Sommer Contemporary Art | Tel Aviv

 

The German poet Conrad Ferdinand Meyer describes the two sails in his narrative "Zwei Segel" ("Two Sails") 1882, as a picture of a loving couple, and the French writer Stéphane Mallarmé wrote at the same time a poem: "Solitude, reef, and starry veil / To whatever’s worthy of knowing / The white concern for our sail". Mallarmé speaks of the "The white concern for the sail", Gregor Hildebrandt translated this picture for himself: "The Black Concern for the Sail" The title of his exhibition at Sommer Contemporary Art, in Tel Aviv.

 



For this exhibition, Gregor Hildebrandt has created a foresail and mainsail, made to fit a 12-metre sailing yacht. With this boat, Gregor, a skipper and a crew, sailed from Cyprus to Tel Aviv on 19 October, departing exactly one week before the exhibition opening on 26 October. Hildebrandt says: "For me the sail is the metaphor of bringing my art to Tel Aviv." Regardless of the artist's personal motivation, however, this voyage also receives something unintentionally and clearly political: Cyprus and Tel Aviv, an eastern point of the western world and a western point of the eastern world.



 

The two black sails have been meticulously woven from the tape of audio-cassettes. The songs recorded on these tapes are dedicated to travel, the sea and sailing. "Love among the Sailors" by Laurie Anderson, "Sailor Man" by Tocotronic or "To Damascus" by Phantom, Ghost from 2003, where it says: „From the long forgotten garden / On a ship tie to the mast / I‘m sailin‘ over to Damascus / Driven forward by the past / And in the long forgotten chaos / Sits the one I’m looking for / Sailing over to Damascus / Landing on this desert shore“