Lena Henke / An Idea of Late German Sculpture; To The People Of New York, Kunsthalle Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland

The heart of Lena Henke’s exhibition at the Kunsthalle Zürich is a machine. With a winch, large pieces of chain mail are pulled through the room. However, this material made of aluminum rings does not protect virile bodies in close combat. Instead, it glides across the hard surfaces of the concrete foor. The armor does not protect the surfaces from the outside, and instead opens up the possibility of a cool touch, which it itself paradoxically performs. With one exception, all these works, like objects in a scientific experiment, are doubled in the exhibition, and the exhibition itself is divided into two halves by a wall. In one part, the artworks are points in a constantly changing relation that becomes part of the machine-made relationships between the objects. The visitor is forced into this relationship as he moves through it. On the other side of the wall, in the second part, the same pieces are brought into an opposite state: rather than designing a possible environment with objects in motion, here they stand motionless, as images, on a shelf. They are in a situation of waiting: the past of the storage room. Likewise, in times, the field of chainmail will break down and come appart, become an entropic topography of an industrial ruin.

3 March to 13 May 2018