The exhibition Wildwechsel by Emmanuel Bornstein, conceptualized for Kunsthalle Rostock, is a continuation of his exhibition Shift, realized in 2021 in collaboration with Kunsthalle Rostock and the Conseil Départemental de la Haute-Garonne at Château de Laréole near Toulouse, the artist’s birthplace. The solo exhibitions trace the development of Bornstein’s work as reflected by his biography, which is characterized by a cultural exchange between Germany and France. Wildwechsel and Shift provide an overview of the artistic work of the Berlin-based French painter from 2011 to 2021.
In his earlier works, the artist deals primarily with the Holocaust and World War II, and his paintings are strongly influenced by his own family history. The contemplation and treatment of this theme at the site of the events, namely in Berlin, contributed significantly to the implementation of serial works that pursue the traces of the past. In later works, the artist detaches himself from his subjective experience and devotes himself more to the investigation and recon- struction of contemporary events. Over a period of five years, the artist and I were able to exchange numerous ideas and experiences on the occasion of meetings and studio visits. The following text summarizes our conversations.
Tereza De Arruda: In several groups of works, you deal with the representation of animals, such as dogs. The seemingly threatening figures could be read as metaphors or references to evil in the world, such as the immeasurable suffering of World War II, which decisively determined your family’s fate. Are there concrete models for these series, or do the motifs stem from your subjective under- standing?
Emmanuel Bornstein: I have often dealt with the depiction of deportees, whether in the form of fragmented bodies crossing the pictorial space or of apocalyptic episodes. In doing so, I was always concerned with showing that amid the rubble there were “fireflies”1—tiny, unexpected, lonely lights in the dark, somehow trying to escape the destruction, circumstances, and death. In The Dog (2013), a work in the exhibition, I take up the composition of Goya’s The Colossus (1808–12) and replace the figure with the demonic-looking head of a Doberman appearing against a black and yellow nocturnal background. The Dog concludes a cycle of paintings created between 2011 and 2013, populated by a bestiary of people with animal heads. While the series references Goya’s Los caprichos (The Caprices), it is also a tribute to one of my first teachers, to his way of presenting the tragedy of the world as a spectacle that is both terrifying and grotesque.
TA: Texts and prose are an important part of your work. It is often apparent that letters have served as models for your works. The content is not always legible but remains recognizable in parts. The collage-like applied sentences and words partly overlap. Thus, the core of the statements remains hidden—no final truth is revealed. Here, the traces of the past are deliberately blurred. Does this refer directly to your own history, which you veil in a painterly way, so to speak?
EB: My maternal great-grandfather crossed the Alps with his family, like many other Italian immigrants who fled from Mussolini to France. My paternal grandparents were Jews, French, who came to the country as Polish immigrants. My grandfather, who was born in Berlin, and his parents fled the rise of Nazism. So, I myself emerge from various European migrations, all of which were triggered by the fascist alliance of 1936 between Mussolini and Hitler. In this light, it is not surprising that migrants occupy a central place in my work. Writing has also always been an important component of my works, in which the relationship to the text is constantly present. I am thinking, among other things, of the titles of my exhibitions, which often refer to important figures of German-language literature, such as Ingeborg Bachmann or Franz Kafka. The works of these authors have strongly influenced my thinking. At the same time, it makes sense to me to incorporate writing into my paintings as a trace and as immediately identifiable, but not necessarily decipherable, as clear signs. The viewer should be able to decipher fragments of these texts beneath the layer of paint. The Three Letters series, for example, is based on letters and official documents that refer to three people: Carmen, my paternal grandmother, Eric, my childhood friend, and Franz Kafka. In this case, I applied the paint directly to the printed archival documents and handwritten letters. Perhaps this was a way for me to better bear the pain, suffering, and death.
TA: Several members of your family are active in theater. That’s another reason literature plays a big role in your work. Would you describe your work as a symbiosis between literature, history, and reality? And what influence do literary figures have on your artistic work?
EB: I act like a “pathseeker”, to speak in the words of Imré Kertész. Indeed, in my work I try to create a symbiosis between literature, history, and reality. My series K. is revealing in this respect, as it refers directly to the eponymous character in Kafka’s novel, but also to Klaus Barbie. In my imagination, I can’t separate the two—it’s as if one can’t exist without the other.
TA: The series Another Heavenly Day shows you, the artist, as a protagonist and observer of your own existence and environment. The subjective representation refers to the play Happy Days by Samuel Beckett, in which human existence is shown as a borderline situation between life and death. Its protagonists are “figures who insist on the eternally disappointed illusion of waiting.”2 Apocalyptic scenarios are found in virtually all of Beckett’s plays. What role does theater play for you and your artistic development? To what extent does recourse to other art forms enable a more meaningful rendering of reality?
EB: In the play Ode marítima by Fernando Pessoa, magnificently directed by Claude Régy, the actor Jean-Quentin Châtelain gives body and voice to the chaos of the world. In the same way, I want to confront this chaos by eliciting new, unexpected resources from the act of painting, thus reviving memories and images that in turn open up new possibilities once again.
TA: Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot, published in 1952, inspired you to create several works. The male figures in your paintings are an allusion to the tramps Estragon and Vladimir, the play’s main protagonists. Although the play is primarily about the endless waiting of the two men, it touches on multiple themes of great social significance: violence, exploitation, mass murder, social conflict. Are the two characters in your work representative of current human tragedies that are reported daily in the press or that we frequently encounter in everyday life? What does it mean to you as a young artist to deal primarily with such dark themes?
EB: For a long time, I used the color yellow as a structuring element in my paintings. Its ambiguity, its negative charge, are an inexhaustible source of inspiration for me. Then, starting in 2010, I immersed my figures in yellow light. Transfigured by death,they become inert and grotesque bodies emerging from the camps of horror—as if this color enabled me to depict the monstrosity of reality. Since that time, I always prime the canvas with a bright cadmium yellow, which is gradually covered and “polluted” by the other colors. The painting thus reveals immaculate surfaces and “stains” at the same time. This ambivalence runs through all my works. In 2019 and 2020, I painted the paintings Vladimir et Estragon and Cull I, a reference to Beckett and the theater of the absurd. They show two bodies inter- twined, two figures linked together, one seeming to save the other from a fatal fall. But perhaps it is just the opposite; perhaps one is trying to drown the other and make him disappear. So, the image allows for two opposing readings.
TA: In 2019, you were invited to participate in the Curitiba International Biennial. The theme of the exhibition was “Open Borders,” in reference to the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Your series Run was created in this context. Three years later, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, we find ourselves in a situation of global restriction. How do you feel about the reality of the current situation? How does this situation affect your artistic development?
EB: When I heard Boris Cyrulnik talk about resilience in relation to the work of caregivers, I realized that in the face of injury it is important to represent trauma. The “healing function” of the work of art interests me and I want to exploit this potential in an active way in the face of a world that eludes me.
