The Anselm Keifer exhibition at The Royal Academy is a must. Monumental, moving, mind-blowing! As Seth Oliver says, Keifer managers

to combine the majestic with the deeply personal. Outside the Academy you are confronted by an intriguing, disturbing, thought-provoking

moving as well as beautiful installation. There are some amazing views through the glass vitrine to the buildings in the courtyard that

offset the whole piece beautifully. The work is timeless and timely as we ourselves look nightly through the vitrine of our T.V. sets at a war-

torn world and question the very nature of man.

 

IMG_4925Photos Diana Baur

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After years of study, Khlebnikov concluded that a major sea battle took place every 317 years, or multiples thereof. Kiefer celebrates this heroic and ludicrous activity with a work that is both monument and anti-monument. Measuring almost 17 metres in total and consisting of two large glass vitrines, Kiefer creates a transparent, reflective sea-scape in three dimensions that calls to mind the Romantic sublime of painters from JMW Turner to Caspar David Friedrich. Kiefer uses the frames of the vitrines to stage a mysterious drama, in which viewers, seeing each other and their own reflections, become participants.

Inside the exhibition you are treated to some monumental works, such as the photograph of the one below, found on the internet. There is

just no substitute for seeing the work “in the flesh”

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