Punk in Berlin: NÄNZI: Making love and pogo dancing

“Where am I?” is a question that apparently preoccupied the artist NÄNZI, whose work is currently on view in Berlin. She has sprinkled them into her environments and sculptural installations several times. A simple answer could be that the artist, born in 1962 under the real name Sybille Reichert into a farming family in Baden-Württemberg, could be found in all of her activities. Starting with her performative appearances in extravagant clothing, her drawings, paintings, collages and the buxom women’s bodies, sparkling with vitality and sex, but also highly vulnerable, which they make from materials as diverse as plaster, terracotta, ceramics, wood, plastic, papier-mâché and Fell created. Infectious humor, feminist self-confidence – but never without self-irony – and an energetic creative power have permeated NÄNZI’s work from the very beginning, since the early sculptures of the 1990s.

In 1993, NÄNZI created a 2.20 meter high sculpture with a breathing mask and fur and cheekily called it “Beuysjanerin”. In doing so, she alluded to Joseph Beuys’ story as a pilot of a dive bomber, or Stuka for short, as well as his action of explaining his art to a dead rabbit in 1965 in Düsseldorf’s Schmela Gallery to the exclusion of the audience. At the same time, it is also an ironic statement about the excessive closeness to artist role models and the widespread mania in art to exalt everything by Beuys, including the myths he spread. All of this with a good dose of freedom and cheekiness, it is the artist’s very own expression. Her desire to create really jumps out at those who see her.

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As a teenager, NÄNZI escaped the rural confines of the countryside into the punk scene in Karlsruhe, before she moved to West Berlin in the early 1980s and began studying at the University of the Arts, now the University of the Arts, which she completed as a master student with the sculptor Joachim Schmettau concluded. Her classical training is clearly visible in the precise body and facial modeling of many of her figures. But the “beautiful”, intact design of flawless bodies was not in their interest. NÄNZI’s figures, often self-portraits, instead contain drastic, strange elements; their bodies are imperfect and do not necessarily correspond to the prevailing ideal of beauty. Big asses, thick legs, sometimes wrapped in rags and marred by the dust of time.

In 1998, NÄNZI created a 3.50 meter high sculpture made of Styrodur, plaster and fabric, of which unfortunately only one photo still exists. “Angel of the Apocalypse” was the title of the beheaded woman sculpture. NÄNZI’s Angel refers to Walter Benjamin’s eleventh thesis in “On the Concept of History”, in which he constructs the “Angel of History” based on Paul Klee’s “Angelus Novus”. In contrast to Benjamin’s construction, NÄNZI’s angel does not look at the accumulated rubble of past history, but rather anticipates future destruction. Grass grows out of the open neck wound and the arms end in handleless stumps. From today’s perspective, a disastrous picture of damage and close to the current world situation, close to the danger of an impending nuclear inferno.

This depressing view was no stranger to the punk culture, which NÄNZI always felt close to. Recently, when the archive with the artist’s works was moved, the clay sculpture “My Punker” resurfaced, which can now be seen again for the first time in a long time. In Berlin, NÄNZI was active in the corresponding scene, frequented the legendary West Berlin club “Risk” and was well known to both Blixa Cash and his band, the Einstreichen Neuhäusern, as well as Nick Cave. One of her artist books designed with photos, texts and drawings bears witness to this.

Since NÄNZI, like so many other colleagues, could not make a living from her art, in 1991 she worked, among other things, as a supervisor at the exhibition “Metropolis” in the Gropius Bau organized by Christos M. Joachimides and Norman Rosenthal. This is evidenced by loving little drawings in which she captured the audience with their art comments. Satirical milieu studies shown in a showcase. But the exhibition also features paintings and even a very early large painting on wood from the 1980s. A punk couple kissing in front of a man who has been stabbed with two knives. The knives are labeled “hate” and “lust” and a text proclaims: “In the beginning the idea was to make the enemy cold. When the deed was done, all that was left was the desire to make love and dance pogo.« (sic!)

Since NÄNZI’s sudden death in 2013 at the age of 52 due to an aneurysm, the art historian Helen Adkins, curator of the exhibition, and the actor and long-time partner of the artist Dietmar H. Heddram have been looking after the estate. Some works no longer exist and can only be found on the website as photographs. So far it has not been possible to publish the expressive work that was completed by death, for example in a catalogue. That’s why the two estate administrators are collecting donations and hope to one day be able to organize a larger exhibition and a worthy publication.

»NÄNZI. Where am I?”, until February 24th, KUNSTSTIFTUNG k52, Berlin

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