Bilder einer Ausstellung | 14.07 – 4.08.07
Mark Neufeld

 

For his installation at super bien!, Canadian-born Berlin-based artist Mark Neufeld presents a group of images and objects that relate to one another via shared references to painting and music. In contrast to much recent work exploring this intersection, Neufeld consciously historicizes the relationship between the two forms, through an overt reference to 19th century “program music”—where orchestral music is explicitly based on an image or sequence of images.

Specifically, the suite of piano works from which the exhibition borrows its title: Pictures at an Exhibition, by the 19th century Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky. However, instead of basing his investigation on the 19th century original, Neufeld cites instead a pop-music appropriation of this influential work, by the British “progressive” rock group Emerson, Lake and Palmer. This choice shifts the focus from an authentic work towards a less authentic work; one in which the suggestions of doubling and returning lead out onto numerous other “echoes” and returns.

Staged as a kind of gesamtkunstwerk or total artwork installation, Neufeld’s work offers a condensed, burlesque re-interpretation of modern painting, as glimpsed through the rearview-mirror of painting’s spectacle-addicted double: late 20th century popular music.