Disturbing Images and Visual Interference
Beate Eickhoff
Maike Freess is an artist for whom art is not an end in itself, not a play of
forms or images. Instead she uses it to fundamentally question everything
that seems familiar and certain to us: she presents the insanity that is
held to be the logic of reality, the insecurities from which individual
consciousness is composed. Her subject matter, as she puts it, is “the
human being in her imperfect, limited and unstable nature, her relationship
to herself, her surroundings, to other people and society, the ambiguity of
the human psyche”.
Before Maike Freess began her studies at Burg Giebichenstein in Halle, she
had already found her medium, as a teenager, in the drawing; and it has
remained her most personal, authentic and at the same time unsettling
means of expression and portrayal until today. Impressed by the medieval
paintings of Hieronymus Bosch or Hans Memling’s “The Last Judgement”,
by Goya’s series “Los Caprichos” or the paintings of Caravaggio, her
beginnings, with respect to craftsmanship and the impact of the drawing
portrait, are entirely within the tradition of German draughtsmen such as
Grünewald, Dürer and Cranach. At the Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig it
was Werner Tübke or Arno Rink who represented this style. The reduction
and concentration that fascinated Freess in the German art of drawing
certainly corresponded to an urge to declare, to make a point, to be clear
and direct. But in order to address the existential questions a modern
artist like herself feels deeply, she has consistently not subjected herself
to any restrictions and makes use of all contemporary techniques. She has
developed sculpture, photography and video in interrelated phases and
continued to draw in parallel. What she has never done, though, is paint
on canvas.
Maike Freess’s central motif in all media is the human figure – with a
general concentration on the classical, anonymous head or full-figure
portrait. While the drawings – apart from her recent works – remain in the
undefined, unreal airiness offered by the black or white paper, Freess uses
photography in order to bring us as close as possible to the question in
hand, to create places that appear to be a piece of reality. We may be able
to recognise something familiar – a forest glade, a room, a bath – but the
places radiate an oppressive strangeness. They are too cool, too aesthetic,
too obviously arranged and artificial to suggest real situations from
everyday life. The play of light is unreal, as is the extreme sharpness of
the images. One, two or three people are in action in these specific places.
The picture margins make the respective location into a clearly defined
enclosed space in which the tension of the action is concentrated. The
protagonists have a sophisticated elegance but remain static. The viewer is
left in peace for the necessary contemplation. Composed in a few, usually
clear and attractive bright colours, the photographs seem as monumental
and calm as painting. Everything is staged so unambiguously that we
immediately understand that nothing is being narrated here; rather, the
photograph is an allegory, a dream image, a “psychological space”.
The protagonists’ clothing is not fashionable, perhaps more oldfashioned;
disconcertingly, it cannot be categorised, an indication that the
situations have been anonymised and removed from our present time.
The two photographic series “Should I Stay”? (2002) show the artist in
close proximity to two men, sitting on a bench or in a forest clearing, all
three with an extremely strong, very physical presence, all apparently
tormenting themselves with the title question. It is a situation that
everyone knows: we are set, existentially speaking “thrown”, into a reality
for which there are no rules or instructions. The viewer notices emotional
stirrings and nuances, and almost physically senses the disquieting
tension and explosively charged atmosphere. As attractive as the forest
scene is, the beauty is deceptive; the isolation of the individual figures,
and their illogical actions, is mysterious; a latent physical violence against
themselves or the others can be felt. The expressively staged gestures
appear to be unambiguous, but their aim remains hidden. There is no (re)
solution and no gratification. In series the individual situations become
a drama, without a beginning or end, ultimately leaving the question
“should I stay?” with the viewer.
In all the photographic works the artist herself is the main protagonist.
Almost life size, often alone and with minimal props (a chair, a table),
she stages herself in staged places. If other people appear, they remain
members of the cast, peripheral figures subordinated to her role. She
exercises a demonstrative and extreme self-examination, effectively as a
proxy for the viewer. For no one observes us as exactly as we do ourselves.
As with us, she is her own greatest mystery, her own clown. One hides
behind one’s appearance, and no self-projection can be traced back to a
true image. That the artist always appears as model certainly doesn’t only
have to do with the fact that she can implement her ideas most precisely
with herself as protagonist. The works stand in a long artistic tradition
of the critical self-portrait, from Otto Dix and Max Beckmann to Cindy
Sherman or Francesca Woodman.
Freess’s tendency to present herself in absurd situations borders on an
obsession. The photographic series “Die Strafe” [Punishment] (2004), which
shows her tarred and feathered, is one of her most extreme self-depictions.
In formal terms, and in the context of her work as a whole, the connections
of this impressive series to her drawings and sculptures are obvious. She
is alone, her body completely black and covered with white feathers. At
once punished and decorated, she sits opposite us in a steady and stately
pose like a queen; neither helpless nor suffering, she looks at us from the
depths. As a woman artist she is entitled to show female identity bound and
tormented in this way. And she even takes the self-reflection a step further.
With a wax cast of herself – captured in a photographic series from 1999 –
she creates her own double, a clone which she tries to bring to life through
quirky actions. The viewer is shocked by the knowing smile, no matter
what happens, of this figure without an identity or will of its own. The
monochrome whitish wax doll is the artist’s alter ego, her second self,
her own shadow, which she observes. But this wax sculpture is not only
used to picture the artist’s dialogue with herself; it is also found in some
of Freess’s installations.
Maike Freess doesn’t merely touch on the sensitive issues represented
by the human psyche; the extreme physicality encountered in her works
– that is, the other side of the human being – has the effect of a breach
of taboo. The back-and-forth of living and lifeless gets under the viewer’s
skin. Freess forms whole bodies in wax, but also individual body parts:
ears, nose, face. The velvet, skin-like surface or the artificial hair are
both artfully aesthetic and repellently unaesthetic, even gruesome. The
muteness of the reproductions is filled with sounds, undifferentiated
noises, an unidentifiable slurry of words. Seated wax figures with long
black hair, who – if not the likeness of the artist are at least similar to her
– again show the struggle with oneself. While in “It Turns My Head” (2001)
or “Caprice” (2002) they sit dumb and motionless, a small-format video
hidden at each one’s feet shows a person gesticulating wildly. In another
work, “Ich bin an einem Ort, an dem nichts geschieht” [I Am in a Place where
Nothing Happens] (2004) Freess combines the figure with an extensive,
spatial collage of highly cultivated drawings and discretely inserted small
videos to create a sexually loaded assemblage. The conjunction of such a
traditional genre as the drawing, in which Maike Freess has the virtuosity
of the old masters, with modern media is exceptional. In comparison with
the almost minimalist photographs, these sculptural installations and
‘combine drawings’ are a highly complex challenge to the sense of sight,
if not a deliberate overload.
Is the presentation light-hearted or despairing, ironic or deadly serious?
In two other works, which in formal aspects are actually singular in the
artist’s development, the doubt remains: in reference to the catchphrase
‘form follows function’, one could say that the subject matter requires the
artistic medium, and that this shows the intensity with which Maike Freess
takes up existential questions.
“Der archivierte Tod” [Archived Death] (2011) is a video in which a little
marionette plays the Grim Reaper, who liberates himself from an archive
box and hops along the pavement, falling all the time into puddles. Or –
again, the title is part of the work – the installation “Das Blaue vom Himmel”
[Pie in the Sky] (2011): a lifelike and life-sized blonde schoolgirl in a short
pleated skirt and proper socks revolves endlessly and helpless, like on a
musical box, and is very similar to the remote-controlled marionette Death
hanging on his strings. Here too harmlessness is mixed with absolute
existential peril, with total extinction. There is no escape. Shining out like
a beacon in this beautiful, innocuous, unexcited endlessness – once we
have identified the girl’s belt – is the realisation that it contains grenades.
According to Maike Freess, who created this poetic and topical installation
in the year of 9/11, the bomb stands for the ubiquitous danger of our time,
for the rupture of all values.
Maike Freess sees her photographic series of apparently unconnected
individual images held together only by a shared title – such as “Insomnia”
(2004) – and the images originating in an apparent sequence of action –
such as “Should I Stay” (2000) – as ‘film stills’ or ‘tableaux vivants’, even
though they have no cinematic basis. She suggests an order of events, but
this can’t be verified, because she doesn’t reveal what happens in the time
between the shots; that is, she deliberately leaves gaps that stimulate the
imagination of the viewer. In her films, by contrast, there is a spatial and
temporal continuum. But even this is misleading, as the actions are futile,
without a beginning or an end, an absurd theatre. What the protagonists
do is unspectacular, surreal, always the same. Literary associations arise
– to Beckett, for example, or to Kafka.
The videos are also about interaction and communication. Optically the
filmed sequences of “When It’s Most Beautiful” (1999) (a chess game
played in masks that ends in chaos) and “All Wishes Start from Here”
(2001) (a man and a woman at a table, unable to communicate) have much
in common with the photographic works. Here too people work away at
one another without finding a common ground. It’s about isolation and
powerlessness in a world without contact. As Maike Freess says, everyone
is “trapped inside herself in Beckett’s sense”. The comic and the tragic are
combined as much as the beautiful and the ugly, order and chaos, in this
absurd acting.
In other videos, such as “A Noise Hums in My Head” (2001), the artist
is again the main protagonist. In this work Maike Freess shows four
short sequences one after the other. Each one could be seen as a filmed
performance, with the difference that the settings are clearly defined,
configured and pictorially composed, as in the photographic works.
Freess purposefully shows us what we should see; every apparent
visual distraction leads back to the intended message. The minimal and
rudimentary actions repeat themselves endlessly: a woman stands at a
window, looking out; a woman dances alone in a room; a woman walks
haltingly up some stairs. In the fourth sequence we see two men in suits,
one of whom throws himself at the feet of the other. As simply as the
individual films are conceived, viewing them in sequence is complex, as
the way in which the four actions interrelate remains open. We intently
follow what happens, until perhaps we construct a relationship for
ourselves, inventing our own story.
Similarly to Marina Abramovic´ in her performance with the precise
and simple title “The Artist is Present”, Maike Freess demonstrates
psychological self-experimentation in the widest sense here. An awareness
of the dilemma of being caught in one’s own psychic structure is evoked,
although no real interaction occurs between film figure and viewer. The
latter can always retreat to her passive position as observer. But in the
video “Tanzen Sie?” [Do You Dance?] (1999), for example, Freess crosses
the threshold with a direct address. The action is extremely simple: music
sounds, and an attractive young woman in an evening dress invites us to
dance. There is no specific place characterised by narrative details here.
The invitation seems to come from nowhere. Projected onto a freestanding
transparent surface in the middle of the space, the film figure – as in other
videos – has the presence of a real person.
The isolation of the figure has much to do with the drawn portraits. A
study of Freess’s drawings alters the view of her drawings, and vice versa.
The exhibition at the Von der Heydt-Kunsthalle, which Maike Freess has
entitled “Of Blind Certainty”, brings both art forms into close – not only
spatial – context.
Maike Freess has never neglected her primary artistic medium, and seeing
her formally so contradictory work in context is one of the most fascinating
aspects of each of her exhibitions. She has never painted, because, as
she says, the hardness and recalcitrance of paper is important to her
and the suppleness of canvas uncongenial. She needs resistance. On the
other hand the freedom of surreal experimentation is at its greatest in the
drawings. Maike Freess draws without making preliminary studies. The
dynamic of the pencil strokes, the play of light and dark and the complexity
of the composition can be very different, depending on the group of works.
It could be asked what is the more impressive in her drawing, the power
of her imagination or the virtuosic hyperrealism. But ultimately every one
of her drawings is so powerful that aesthetic appreciation is secondary.
She has drawn a great many very different portraits. In “Humming Place”
(2010), for example, she created a private collection of anonymous faces
of dreaming, sleeping, musing figures, all of them lost in reverie, turned
away, wrapped up in themselves. They remain far away and unfathomable
in their own worlds, united by the sound that accompanies them, which can
be identified only as an unintelligible murmuring. In drawing, too, Maike
Freess has a poetic side and a critical, caricature-like one: an example of
the latter is “Die Auszeichnung” [The Accolade] (2010), which displays the
visages of modern society lined up and scorned, as in a Punch-and-Judy
show. Every one of those portrayed is disabled or blind in some way, but
self-assured nonetheless.
By contrast, the Parisian critic Philippe Dagen says of “Amok” (2012), one
of Freess’s largest and most important drawings: “Her biography says that
Maike Freess was born in Leipzig in 1965. One therefore has to believe in the
transmigration of souls, for she is engrossed in the artistic eye of someone
like Baldung Grien, or at least Grünewald or, closer to us, Bellmer. She
draws on white or black paper with the same sureness, and with the same
facility of touch creates the spatiality of the heads and bodies through
lines and points of light. But she is of today. You can see her disgruntled
or jaded female faces on the street. The military parades going on in the
background have been familiar to us since the 20th century. ‘Amok’, the
very large, dominating drawing, is one of the most impressive historical
allegories ever seen. And one of the most gruesome.”
The most recent drawings, on white or black paper, have large formats and
are precisely worked, a reason why they can compete in every way with
the media of film and photography. The portrait features are now more
individualised. What is new is the spatial concept, which puts the figures
on stage in a certain way. The clothing is – again, as in the photographic
works – realistic yet strange. Clad in shorts, a shirt or a suit with sock
liners, the figures stand in a dream world, not on the earth. Their gaze
remains within the pictorial space; each of them is hermetically sealed or
trapped in their own framework. The reduction to black and white with a
few accents of colour indicates that these are phantasms, hallucinations.
All kinds of absurd details can be discovered: the body that is alien to one,
or becoming so; estranged limbs or foreign organs that attach or plant
themselves; distorted faces; people with claws. Figures march along the
back of a boy; the belly of a woman opens, revealing all kinds of grossness.
Fantasy and truth are mixed. It isn’t really a surreal imagination that brings
out these images, more of an X-ray vision. In formal terms they are strictly
controlled; there is no endless further growth, no labyrinthine seething,
but structured sequence. Individual portraits are juxtaposed by bands of
marching figures – the anonymous collective breathing down the neck of
the subject.
It’s as if the surface images we normally see have had to be torn apart or
destroyed in order to break through to the real things; in order to get down
to the truth, or certainty. But what emerges is terrible, often enough, which
is why Maike Freess’s drawings sometimes almost breach the boundaries
of good taste. In the ones with a black background the atmosphere is
ominous. The motifs, coupled with old-masterly ability, make one think
of medieval images of hell, as if we were looking at our modern Day of
Judgement. The voyeurism causes us to linger – and then? In fact we
observe ourselves thinking; we even try to get on the track of our own logic.
But the point is probably not to interpret or explain our imagination, but
simply to experience. Freess’s drawing is certainly related to that of Alfred
Kubin, although with her work active composition is in the foreground,
rather than the passive suffering of dream images.
A striking means of composition is Freess’s invention of cut lines of
paper, called “cuts” or “paper cuts”, that she inserts into the drawings
as a way of disrupting the viewer’s gaze. They have the function of fault
lines, and prevent an all too realistic way of seeing things, an all to certain
interpretation. The term “cut” is naturally associated with film montage,
which separates or connects spaces and times. And here they do in fact
cause spatial facets, necessitating a successive perception of individual
pictorial fields and slowing down the act of seeing. “They stand for the
unexpected, the uncertain, the unknown, the unplanned, for the incalculable
and illogical events with which we are permanently confronted. These
intermediate spaces, black holes or gaps mark psychological space as
‘thought space’,” writes Maike Freess.