1 Lost Paradise - Armin Kerber

Lost Paradise – The Angel’s Gaze
to look down upon the East of Eden. A Garden Show: there is Paul Mc-
Carthy‘s oversize pop memorial, the complicated pile, and its aggressive
unambiguousness that constitutes an immediate counter-correspondence
to Renzo Piano‘s harmonious triple-wave structure, as well as the hermetic
conceptual secret of Sol LeWitt‘s Cube. In front of the residential
buildings along the Wyssloch valley, Claudia & Julia Müller‘s three blind
façades mirror each other and, like gigantic gates, allow us to glimpse an
imaginary jungle world. Down by the stream, we can se Joep van Lieshout‘s
Wellness Skull: as we realize that the skull contains a simple sauna,
it transforms itself into an ironical memento mori to our affluent society
conditioned for happiness: the monument to death is a plastic spa, or, to
quote Benjamin‘s statement about happiness in the age of mechanical
production: “There is a recipe for happiness as there is one for pudding.
All that is needed is the right dose of various elements. It is an effect.”
No matter how unreal the numerous, far-flung artworks may seem from
up there, and how quirky the week-end performances in the Garden Show,
the image might be a conciliatory one – painted on a thin ground of fear.
We never know when the next disaster will strike. It rarely does when we
feel at risk; even more rarely will it strike at the museum. By the time you
are up there – after all, “catastrophe” originally means “overturn” – you
may wish for a guardian angel who, even in the 21st century, has a hotline
to Paradise. One thing is quite certain: the view you can enjoy from up
there, with The Angel‘s Gaze as an eye-witness East of Eden, will make a
lasting impression. We shall see.
1 Siri Hustvedt, “9/11, or One Year Later”, in: A Plea For Eros. Essays. London, 2006, pb; p. 121
2 Hustvedt, p. 122.
3 [Translator’s note: My English translation is indebted to the one published at http://www.sfu.
ca/~andrewf/CONCEPT2.html and accessed in May 2008. All other translations, unless otherwise
credited, are mine.]
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