We would like to draw your attention to the exhibition BATTLE:RELOADED by Margret Eicher at the Kunstmuseum Moritzburg in Halle and warmly invite you to the lecture "Weltbilder. On the tapestries of Margret Eicher" by art historian and cultural scientist Wolfgang Ullrich*.
"Weltbilder. On the tapestries of Margret Eicher"
Wolfgang Ullrich
Thursday, 1 December, 6:30 PM
Kunstmuseum Moritzburg
Friedemann-Bach-Platz 5
06108 Halle (Saale)
"It's about power. More precisely, about the representation of power. About claiming power and taking power through manipulation." (Margret Eicher)
Art is also communication: in pictures, in literature, the legends of the past have been perpetuated into the present. In this context, the tapestry has a special tradition. Larger than man and heavy, it served not only to communicate and commemorate the heroic, warlike history of a country, but above all to represent rule and power. In these functions - communication and representation of power - the conceptual artist Margret Eicher sees a kinship with the media images of the present. Since the turn of the millennium, the conceptual artist has been quoting pictorial works from art and cultural history in tapestries, bringing them into a clash with the iconographic media imagery of the present day. In a portico, at the center of floral borders we see: Lara Croft, the Ninja Turtles, Batman, Julian Assange and many more.
The Moritzburg in Halle (Saale) is currently showing the solo exhibition Battle:Reloaded with 21 tapestries by the artist, of which the central work of the same name was created especially for the exhibition. The tapestry measures an impressive 30 meters and is 1.20 meters high, the first time Eicher has used the form of the panorama. As in other pictorial works, in Battle:Reloaded the artist refers to an object of cultural and art history: the Bayeux Tapestry (11th century), on which the conquest of England by William the Conqueror is depicted.
A meta-level emerges, which has something to tell us about the current and the history of our culture, which is original, ironic, critical, but also ambiguous, because the media figures are also simply adorable. Through the artist's handwriting an impression that in itself is also powerful. Like the tapestry to the courtly visitor, Margret Eicher's tapestries are forever imprinted on the museum viewer.
In the lower border, the Bayeux Tapestry is depicted in miniature. Above it, however, we are confronted with Eicher's iconic figures of the culture industry. In a continuous epic of ten images, we follow, in the reading direction from left to right, the classical narrative pattern of the history of mankind - from the Big Bang, through narratives of war, flight and expulsion, to their dissolution in the fusion of reality and virtuality.
Margret Eicher - Battle:Reloaded
1 October 2022—8 January 2023
Opening: Friday 30 September, 7 pm
Kunstmuseum Moritzburg, Halle (Saale)
