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  • Simon Starling. ›Three Birds Seven Stories, Interpolations and Bifurcations‹

  • In this work from 2008, Simon Starling – one of the most important contemporary artists (Turner Prize winner in 2005) – brings together various historical events; linking them into a narrative full of associations through spatial and visual references he stages. Past and present, document and invention are bound together and interweave in various media – architecture, sculpture, photography and film.
    In a way characteristic of the artist, the installation combines an architectural project of the German architect Eckart Muthesius from 1929 (the Indian residence Manik Bagh), the wedding of a Maharaja and the oft-filmed script ›The Indian Tombstone‹ written by Fritz Lang and Theo von Harbou in 1921 with the research on this installation which Starling presented as an exhibition in the Turin gallery building ›La Fetta di Polenta‹.
    The fragment of architecture in the Essen installation is an exact reproduction of the fifth of seven stories of the building in Turin. There, 32 black and white photographs and three stones of identical form were exhibited.
    Starling’s photographs show interior and exterior views of today’s palace. The stones are black Belgian marble, white Carrara marble and Indian marble, cut identically using a laser. These materials were chosen for the palace décor and for a group of sculptures the Maharaja commissioned from Constantin Brancusi but which were never completed.
    Starling demonstrates that a transfer of culture must always also be seen as a process of perception to which belong, on both sides – in this case Germany and India – stereotypes and misunderstandings as much as attributions and fantasies with political implications.
    The work therefore simultaneously opens a new perspective on a juxtaposition of European avant-garde and Non-European art already initiated by the founder of the Museum Folkwang, K.E. Osthaus. The relation between various cultural points of contact of the two countries (Germany and India) which Starling makes visible, makes clear the early collection history of the Museum Folkwang as expression of a specific historical and cultural constellation.
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  • Exh_Title_S: Simon Starling. ›Three Birds Seven Stories, Interpolations and Bifurcations‹
  • Exh_Id: 588
  • Exh_Comment_S (Verantw): Painting, Sculpture, Media Art
  • Exh_SpareNField01_N (Verantw ID): 188
Works
Three Birds, Seven Stories, Interpolations and Bifurcations
Three Birds, Seven Stories, Interpolations and Bifurcations
Three Birds, Seven Stories, Interpolations and Bifurcations
Three Birds, Seven Stories, Interpolations and Bifurcations
Photograph by Peter A. Juley & Sons, New York made to commemorate the wedding of Maharaja Yeshwant Rao Holkar Bahadur, to Sanyogita Raje, 1924, found and re-photographed in Turin
Manik Bagh Palace, Indore, the former home of Maharaja Yeshwant Rao Holkar Bahadur, now the Office of the Commissioner, Customs & Central Excise, Madhya Pradesh
Offset Print of a Photomontage of the Exterior of Manik Bagh Palace, 1933
Ballroom Doors, Manik Bagh Palace, Indore (open)
Ballroom Doors, Manik Bagh Palace, Indore (closed)Re-photographed in a 1:1 scale model of the 5th Floor of Via Giulia di Barolo 9, Turin(La Fetta di Polenta) built at Uferstrasse 8, Berlin [...]
1:1 scale model of the 5th Floor of Via Giulia di Barolo 9, Turin (La Fetta di Polenta) built at Uferstrasse 8, Berlin [...]
1:1 scale model of the 5th Floor of 9 Via Giulia di Barolo, Turin (La Fetta di Polenta) built at Uferstrasse 8, Berlin
Interior of a 1:1 scale model of the 5th Floor of Via Giulia di Barolo 9, Turin (La Fetta di Polenta) built at Uferstrasse 8, Berlin
Usha Umbrella Stand
Copies of ›The Tiger of Eschnapur‹ and ›The Indian Tomb‹, by Joe May, Richard Eichberg and Fritz Lang, photographed at the Film Museum, Frankfurt am Main
Jag Mandir Island, Lake Pichola, Udaipur, India
Lake Palace, Lake Pichola, Udaipur, India
Former Bedroom of Maharaja Yeshwant Rao Holkar Bahadur, Manik Bagh Palace, Indore
Former Bedroom of Maharani Sanyogita Raje, Manik Bagh Palace, Indore
Former Ballroom, Manik Bagh Palace, Indore
Main Staircase, Manik Bagh Palace, Indore
Constantin Brancusi, ›Birds in the Sky‹, 1929/30, Watercolour and gouache on paper, 32.4 cm × 66 cm, Collection MNAM – Centre G. Pompidou, Paris
Compaq nk 7000 laptop computer manufactured by Hewlett Packard [...]
Rough-Cut Block of Belgian Black Marble, Catella Marmi, Moncalieri, Italy
Rough-Cut Block of Belgian Black Marble, Catella Marmi, Moncalieri, Italy (Negative)
Indian White Marble Quarry, R.K. Marbles, Rajasthan, India