Beyond the Pain

Starting on October 10, 2020, the Galerie Stadt Sindelfingen is showing the group exhibition Beyond the Pain. On show are videos, installations and performances by 12 contemporary international and national artists from eight nations who explore the themes of pain and overcoming pain in the visual arts. Marking the gallery’s 30th anniversary, the show was conceived by Madeleine Frey, director of the Galerie Stadt Sindelfingen, and co-curator Sebastian Schmitt.

Pain is a subjective and very personal experience. Pain can be caused by biological, emotional or social factors. Pain can mean suffering and torment for body, mind and soul. But pain can also give pleasure and unleash forces. The exhibition is divided into five themes: self-optimisation and pain avoidance, sickness, mourning and world weariness, boundary sexual experiences, and traumatic experiences. However, the focus of the exhibition is not only the subject of pain but also on overcoming pain. In their exhibits, most of the artists show how negative physical and emotional experiences can be turned into a positive attitude to life.

Visual artist and filmmaker Maya Watanabe examines traumatic experiences in her home country Peru. In the 1980s and 1990s, there were armed conflicts between left-wing guerilla organisations and the Peruvian government. Both sides perpetrated massacres on the civilian population. Around six thousand mass graves still exist today. Watanabe accompanied forensic archaeologists exhuming these mass graves, documenting this work in her video Liminal (2019). The video Serious Games – Immersion III (2009) by German filmmaker Harun Farocki shows the treatment of soldiers who returned traumatised from the Iraq War. With the aid of exposure therapy conducted with a computer animation program, patients experience the traumatic events again.

Boundary sexual experience is a theme in the works by Nobuyoshi Araki and Gabrielle Zimmermann. Japanese photographer Nobuyoshi Araki exhibits twenty-one black-and-white photos from the “Tokyo Novelle” series (1995/96). The photographs depict lascivious, very personal and poetic female nudes tied using the shibari technique. The purpose of this erotic bondage is to cause pleasure and satisfaction by experiencing pain, power or humiliation. Stuttgart-based artist Gabrielle Zimmermann also focuses on the subject of BDSM in her sound installation untitled [Black Box] (2020) created especially for this show. The walls of the blacked out crate are sound-proofed. When visitors step inside, they hear an audio track recorded by the artist in a BDSM studio.

Dutch video and conceptual artist Bas Jan Ader is seen in close-up during the almost four-minute film: Ader is crying and appears to be emotionally distraught. The viewers do not find out why he is crying. Only the title of the piece I’m Too Sad to Tell You (1971) offers some clues.

For the “Sickness” section the curators chose works by Damien Hirst and Patrycia German. The Quay (1997–98) by British artist Damien Hirst is reminiscent of the familiar medicine cabinet. Filled with various medicines from Paracetamol, Remedein and Adalat retard to Nifopress retard, the manufacturers promise relief from high blood pressure, fever and pain. Berlin-based artist Patrycia German will be coming to the Galerie Stadt Sindelfingen on a regular basis to stage the performance Heal the Artist, Heal the Artworld (2020), an act of quantum healing. The artist invites visitors to take part in order to cure themselves of emotional and physical pain.

The music video Prototype (2014) was made as part of British Channel 4’s “Born Risky” campaign. In the film, multimedia artist Viktoria Modesta appears with her futuristic prosthetic legs as the standard-bearer of a resistance movement. Complications at birth led to physical impairments. After undergoing numerous operations, she decided to have her left leg amputated below the knee as a prophylactic measure and to improve her mobility—a form of human enhancement intended to overcome pain.

The exhibition is sponsored by Kulturstiftung des Bundes, Baden-Württemberg Stiftung, Mercedes-Benz Werk Sindelfingen, Helmut Fischer Stiftung und Bundesministerium Kunst, Kultur, öffentlicher Dienst und Sport.