Exhibition Andrea Pichl – past, ignored, followed

Around five kilometers away from the large contemporary museum in Hamburg in Berlin-Mitte, where Andrea Pichl’s exhibition “Value Management” can still be seen until the beginning of May, the small, excellently curated gallery Pankow is located, which mainly exhibits the creation of East German artists. Andrea Pichl opened here in early February “History takes place”. In 1980, the Düsseldorf band declamated Fehskfarben “History is made” in their song “One year (it goes forward)”; Pichl does not work on promise of the future, but sees history as a palimpsest: everywhere in the present there are traces of the past, old layers penetrate through new, smooth breaks.

Like laundry stones, printed rectangular textiles hang from the ceiling with photographs. You could think of duvet covers or tablecloths that should dry. However, none of this is good as a tourist memory of the imposed stranger: Pichl shows fences that are bent, walls with illegible remains of graffiti. On the ground floor of a larger building, we recognize an empty hairdressing salon, the language printed on the window of the shop is Polish. Other photos show closed doors, next to it windows with vases, solid decoration. Chainpire fence and window grille result in patterns. Everything is deserted, the geometry breaks train. No ruins, no provisionals are these buildings, but a patchwork made of washing concrete, plastic, wood, undisturbed nature. No look behind the facades is possible, which forbids the private. Leaver from craftsmen refer to a will to design, vacancy in large, presumably public buildings, to impoverish. At the bottom of the second room of the exhibition, a kitschy metal fence is attached made of gilded metal, newly welded, somehow uniform.

Chainpire fence and window grille result in patterns. Everything is deserted, the geometry breaks train.

Andrea Pichl deals with the village of Krzyżowa, which was called Kreisau until 1945, and is located in the Lower Silesia region. Pichl’s photo was taken in the village with around 200 inhabitants and cities in the area today, such as świdnica (Schweidnitz) and Wrocław (Wroclaw).

In Kreisau, three meetings of a group of opponents of National Socialism took place: in May and October 1942 and most recently in June 1943, opposition figures from different social groups met in the mining house of the castle of the family of Moltke: nobles, socialists, Protestants and Catholics. They designed a reorganization of Germany after the end of the Nazi rule, which should be free from nationalism, oppression, exploitation. Helmuth James Graf von Moltke and his wife Freya organized the meetings. A violent overthrow was rejected by the group, which differed from the conservative resistance of the Goerdeler Group or Stauffenbergs. On January 19, a few months before the failed attack on Hitler on June 20, Helmuth von Moltke was arrested by Gestapo and finally murdered in Plötzensee in January 1945.

Andrea Pichl also built a film from photographs from the towns and villages mentioned above, also from the country in between. She collects details, demonstrates where and how history can show and where and how not. In a way, you can see houses from German times with socialist fences in the state of capitalist neglect of public space. The artist reads from letters from Helmuth and Freya von Moltke: he writes from prison, knows about the death sentence, has to put the censorship carefully because of everything. Freya hid these letters in a beehive in the castle.

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While Pichl reads, photos alternate that no people show, twice you see chickens, a dog, once a cow, once and again agriculture, otherwise architecture: historical concrete, in two ways of single houses, impressive modern places from socialist Times, beautiful window fronts, orphaned public places – all of this changes, while in the background Pichl Freya von Moltke’s memories changes reads on the history of the district of the district. This creates an interplay of memories of fascist crimes, human resistance and historical surfaces.

Andrea Pichl succeeds in creating a pronounced archaeological flair for the visibility and invisibility of history, the rooms about German and Polish history. It finds a potential document for historical processes in the most inconspicuous corner. As the exhibition “Value Economy” mentioned at the beginning, which deals with Genex Giftdienst GmbH, which enabled West Germans to buy their East German relatives, for example, is also »History takes place« a subtle installation that hardly leaves or shaking their heads becomes. Instead of leaving the Pankow gallery with a new judgment, Pichl’s work – and that is more sustainable – to take a closer look at your own living environment, to have open eyes for the story in places that are increasingly smoothed.

Andrea Pichl: “History takes place”, until March 30, 2025, Galerie Pankow, Breite Straße 8, Tuesday to Friday 12 noon to 8 p.m., Saturday and Sunday 2 p.m. to 8 p.m.