A forward, 29th October 1945. It’s Monday evening in Paris, Jean-Paul Sartre stands in a crowded conference organised by the Maintenant Club defending existentialism against those who accuse it of emphasising the more deterrent side of human life by giving human beings freedom to choose; the philosopher places ‘existence before essence’. These days existentialism is fashionable in Paris. Existence, hence defining oneself through personal experience, comes first. ‘A man,’ says Sartre, ‘is not definable insofar as at the beginning he is nothing. He will exist later, and he will be what he has made of himself’. In this view, experience and the life project it draws becomes fundamental. ‘Man is, first of all, a project that lives itself subjectively, instead of being moss, rot or cauliflower; nothing exists before this project: nothing exists in the intelligible sky; man will be first of all what he will have planned to be. Not what he will want to be’. But this duty to determine oneself has a dark side called anxiety, that is bewilderment in the face of the responsibility that such freedom entails. How can we solve the problem of anxiety? By using our instinct. Sarte says we shouldn’t rely on any pre-established system of rules. On the contrary, men should choose through their instinct, and “invent” their own future. (J.P. Sartre, L’existentialisme est un humanisme, 1946).
Two decades later. Penny Goring and Amelie von Wulffen were born only four years apart. The first in 1962 in London, the other in ‘66 in Germany. Both believe in the power of the two-dimensional image, but are also equally at ease when their ideas become sculptural. They use their own experience as a paradigm of being. If we wish to adopt a category dear to the time of their birth, we might call them existentialists. But time passes, and categories wear out. Thus, we can say that both artists express their inner discourse through their work, engaging in the process of defining their own human complexity. They do not represent reality, but their “life project”. In this sense, the poetic trait they have in common seems to be authenticity.
As implied by the title of her recent retrospective at the ICA in London—Penny World, 2022—Penny Goring’s artwork is a direct extension of herself and surroundings. Her pared down forms and mythical allusions take on a menacing, expressive power when entangled with her words. As a poet, the titles of Goring’s work, and the phrases she often stitches on them, are an essential aspect of her practice. Goring has published two books of poetry Fail Like Fire (2022) and Hatefuck the Reader (2016). The notion of the body as a battlefield borrowed, from the principles of body art, could be instructive. For Penny Goring too her body and its energy centres serve as a linguistic tool for communicating both symbolically and empathically. Neuroscience has proven how the sight of an image of a spider walking on someone’s skin activates the same neurons that would be activated if the spider actually walked on one’s skin. Goring explores a similar connection between image and experience, by finding visual and verbal expression for internalised oppressions and emotional turmoil. Goring’s work processes a swirl of input including experiences of love, loss, addiction, depression, single motherhood or living within the welfare state, finding physical form for how this felt. While her work functions as a kind of extended self-portrait, it also gives you the impression that you are listening to someone. And in the meantime, the work becomes a mirror.
Similarly, and this is why the encounter in question could be quite successful, Amelie Von Wulffen is used to bringing her own personal life on the stage even when it comes to offering seemingly ‘objective’, or New Objectivity, situations. This is clarified by the text the artist wrote for the solo exhibition entitled ‘des Pudel Kern’ (2023), which was later reproduced as an extract for the exhibition entitled ‘I Think We Did A Great Job’ (2024). The autobiographical narration, told in the first person, without scruples, spontaneously and yet precisely in her text, seems to be balanced in the pictorial. The painted images run parallel to the narrative, which recounts real, problematic, humanly complex autobiographical facts as they happened to the artist. Again, the authenticity of intentions leads the work to become a mirror, which in this case reflects reality, not the beholder; and it is Amelie herself who evokes the Neue Sachlichkeit, not as a mere matter of style, but on an exquisitely poetic level. What she feels akin to is the point of view, not the image in itself. The artist writes: ‘I’ve been asking myself whether the current situation, the unease that many people are feeling at the moment, is similar to what gave rise to the Neue Sachlichkeit of the twenties and thirties. Did the urgent need to paint pictures of houseplants, a glass of water, the view from the window or one’s own face emerge from a general sense of being under threat? You might call it Panic Realism, if you’re fond of catchphrases”. The discourse is not intimate, but rather public and the category of judgement comes into play. The work is therefore authentic to the extent that one can disagree with it. This is the starting point for an artist who evidently prefers to tell rather than seduce, and who is not afraid of displeasing, because her roots are clearly watered with philosophical idealism, even when she moves from painting to watercolour illustration, or to comics, as she has proven herself during the course of her career (Some Watercolours, 2023; Collected Comics, 2011-2020; This Is How It Happened, 2011).
To meet someone, one needs to be willing to adapt to the other. While remaining ourselves, we welcome each other’s influences, because these will at some point help us expand what we know about ourselves. Having the works of two artists meet, besides offering the premises for a bond to be established, should in fact lead to a better understanding of the individual artist, and perhaps the artist to expand his knowledge about herself. The meeting of works can thus lead to the existence of other works, multiplying the effects, broadening the possibilities, producing through the bond the premises for a new dialogue, for the production of new thought. After all, this is also a way of enriching our idea of beauty, isn’t it?
— Stefano Pirovano
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Image credits: Penny Goring and Amelie von Wulffen, Conceptual Fine Arts, Milan, 2024, installation view. Photo: CFAlive.