安森·萊爾

Almine Rech Gallery, Brussels
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner

Brussels, Almine Rech Gallery, White Earth, 2008, p. 229, illustrated in colour

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate. Condition: This work is in very good condition.
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Anselm Reyle’s monumental Eternity is an extraordinary example of the artist’s fascination with a vast and diverse group of materials and forms drawn from both art history and consumer mass-production. The colossal and serpentine twisting forms of Eternity illuminate the varying the degrees to which Reyle typically decontextualizes myriad sources of inspiration. Working in different media and utilising a protean range of aesthetic strategies Reyle constantly distorts recognition and identification, both physically and theoretically, by drawing from contemporary and traditional references. Belonging to the acclaimed series of ‘African Sculptures’ integral to Reyle’s oeuvre, Eternity is part of a larger series that has been prominently showcased in numerous exhibitions, most recently forming a centrepiece of the significant mid-career retrospective, Mystic Silver at Deichtorhallen Hamburg.

Resplendent and archetypal of the artist’s practice, the present work incites a critique of Modernism via the use of kitsch handicraft statuettes that litter tourist flea markets. Practising a type of late-Modernist archaeology, Reyle searches out forms to combine the historical with everyday life and common experience. Herein, Eternity’s curvilinear organic shape at once echoes Modernist sculptures by Hans Arp or Henry Moore, whilst taking inspiration from traditional yet mass-produced African figures of wood and soapstone - figurines, the artist remembers, once owned by his mother: ”…I was just as amazed by modern art as I was by the soapstone sculptures on my mother’s shelf or the silver foil in a shop window. All the phenomena I deal with in my art have this simultaneity of fascination and questionability in common. And this is exactly what I want to bring out. I want to get to the heart of it” (Anselm Reyle in conversation with Daniel J. Schreiber in: Exhibition Catalogue, Tübingen, Kunsthalle Tübingen, Acid Mother Temple, 2009, n.p.).

Fabricated from bronze yet reflecting kaleidoscopic hues as though looking through a prism, the present work is a stunning expression of the artist’s multifaceted production: paintings, sculptures and ready-made objects shining in bright colours, reflecting in silver foil, or illuminated through neon tubes are the characteristic facets of Reyle’s visually arresting oeuvre. His distinctly Twenty First Century practice involves measuring the figure in a 3D-scanner, enlarging and digitally manipulating its form before a model is cast in bronze. Finally, layers of chrome and lacquer are applied and polished to a fine degree, finished with a layer of mirror enamel and translucent paint. As spectacularly evident in Eternity, Reyle creates a work with great tension, contrasting traditional hand sculpted technique with highly engineered bronze work. In direct conversation with the history of abstraction and prominent abstract sculptures of modern art, Reyle employs the sensational and cliché, juxtaposing the traditional with a kitsch and derivative formal conception. By turning a humble object into a grandiose sculptural statement, Eternity represents a truly archetypal component of Reyle’s brilliant and delicately orchestrated art.