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Lot Essay
Created in 1990, the year of the birth of his daughter Helena Augusta Eleonore, Untitled is an important and unique example of one of Martin Kippenberger's most renowned series of 'Laterne' sculptures. Completely adaptable in terms of the placement of its seven elements, which climb the wall according to the whim of whoever is installing it, Untitled seems to be a street lamp which has become a part of the architecture, firmly entwined within the wall, becoming an integral part of its surroundings. With its madcap presentation, Untitled is almost like a Loch Ness monster extending for a long distance before reaching its eventual apex in the form of a glowing red light, which clearly carries its own associations. This work is a signature example from the series which has come to define Kippenberger's work and image as an artist, crossing the fields of art, design and happening which encapsulated his vision for the union of art and life. While there are a number of light sculptures and indeed editioned works, this particular 'Laterne' is completely unique. Only two sister works of similar format, each of them created in a different colour, exist, one of which was shown at the important retrospective of Kippenberger's work Martin Kippenberger: The Problem Perspective, which was held at MOCA in Los Angeles and MoMA in Los Angeles and MoMA in New York in 2008-09. Its unique form can be seen as a metaphor for Kippenberger's own life, gradually climbing the wall, meandering in and out before reaching its comical apotheosis: the light is not in fact lit through a connection through its base, as would be the case in a more conventional street lamp, but instead by a separate wire and plug linked to the uppermost element.
Kippenberger made his first lamp sculpture in 1988, a year that he spent largely living in Seville and Madrid in Spain. This work, Laterne an Betrunkene ('Street Lamp for Drunks') has become iconic through its exhibition at the 1988 Venice Biennale, as well as the photograph that he took of the work in situ outside a Spanish bar and the 1991 painting Kellner Des... in which that image was subsequently enshrined in oils. An example of Laterne an Betrunkene was also placed outside the Paris Bar in Berlin owned and run by Kippenberger's friend, Michel Würthle, where the artist so often held court. It thus became a signature of Kippenberger himself, a marker of his ever-shifting territory. This was a factor that extended through the various hallucinatory permutations through which he subsequently pulled the street lamp: one was shown surrounding a mirror, others doubled over themselves, while Untitled appeared to have grown through walls.
In Untitled, Kippenberger has used the motif of the lamp to function on several levels, challenging and undermining notions about our surroundings, social issues, the artist's own biography and even art itself. After all, this fully-functioning yet highly limited lamp blurs questions of representation: like Jasper Johns' celebrated Target, this sculpture forces the viewer to question where an object ceases to be an object, and instead becomes the mere likeness. However, as is typical in the world of Kippenberger, Untitled's curves mean that it is a deliberate failure as a street-lamp, and is likewise a failure as a representation of a lamp.
The original motif of the lamp sculptures derived in part from the photographs that filled Kippenberger's 1988 artist's book, Psychobuildings. Psychobuildings, and by extension Untitled, explored the notion of art and architecture, of the explorations of man's built environment that has provided such fertile ground for many artists over the last several decades. Many of those artists have explored utopian ideals, though sometimes investigating the shortcomings of their imposition upon people, particularly with reference to twentieth-century Germany. Kippenberger has done this, in part through his use of the atmospheric red light associated with prostitution, and he has done more: he has deliberately immersed himself in a magical and mysterious dystopia, where the streetlight is an impossible, almost organic entity climbing through the gallery space like a living creature or a metal vine. This lamp is essentially useless by dint of its new purpose as an art object and the fact that it appears to have intertwined itself through the walls - in short, it is a psycho-lamp, twisting the usual prerequisites of such a device and becoming deliberately pseudo-utilitarian. Providing little illumination, Kippenberger's lamp exists only to guide us through the twisted landscape of Kippenberger's own ideas and imagination.
Kippenberger made his first lamp sculpture in 1988, a year that he spent largely living in Seville and Madrid in Spain. This work, Laterne an Betrunkene ('Street Lamp for Drunks') has become iconic through its exhibition at the 1988 Venice Biennale, as well as the photograph that he took of the work in situ outside a Spanish bar and the 1991 painting Kellner Des... in which that image was subsequently enshrined in oils. An example of Laterne an Betrunkene was also placed outside the Paris Bar in Berlin owned and run by Kippenberger's friend, Michel Würthle, where the artist so often held court. It thus became a signature of Kippenberger himself, a marker of his ever-shifting territory. This was a factor that extended through the various hallucinatory permutations through which he subsequently pulled the street lamp: one was shown surrounding a mirror, others doubled over themselves, while Untitled appeared to have grown through walls.
In Untitled, Kippenberger has used the motif of the lamp to function on several levels, challenging and undermining notions about our surroundings, social issues, the artist's own biography and even art itself. After all, this fully-functioning yet highly limited lamp blurs questions of representation: like Jasper Johns' celebrated Target, this sculpture forces the viewer to question where an object ceases to be an object, and instead becomes the mere likeness. However, as is typical in the world of Kippenberger, Untitled's curves mean that it is a deliberate failure as a street-lamp, and is likewise a failure as a representation of a lamp.
The original motif of the lamp sculptures derived in part from the photographs that filled Kippenberger's 1988 artist's book, Psychobuildings. Psychobuildings, and by extension Untitled, explored the notion of art and architecture, of the explorations of man's built environment that has provided such fertile ground for many artists over the last several decades. Many of those artists have explored utopian ideals, though sometimes investigating the shortcomings of their imposition upon people, particularly with reference to twentieth-century Germany. Kippenberger has done this, in part through his use of the atmospheric red light associated with prostitution, and he has done more: he has deliberately immersed himself in a magical and mysterious dystopia, where the streetlight is an impossible, almost organic entity climbing through the gallery space like a living creature or a metal vine. This lamp is essentially useless by dint of its new purpose as an art object and the fact that it appears to have intertwined itself through the walls - in short, it is a psycho-lamp, twisting the usual prerequisites of such a device and becoming deliberately pseudo-utilitarian. Providing little illumination, Kippenberger's lamp exists only to guide us through the twisted landscape of Kippenberger's own ideas and imagination.