Almost like honey: “in leather” (2013)
Photo: VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2025, Photo: Jens pulls
Retrospectives have in itself that they impose a temporal-linear development logic to the works of artists that do not exist. In the case of the artist Käthe Kruse, the Berlinische Galerie made this biopic danger productive: Kruse’s work is devoted to orderly as a central topic, and so in the exhibition “Now everything is good” also comes into a conversion with the frame retrospective.
Kruse’s work is inextricably linked to the artist group, the deadly Doris, the part of which was from 1982 until the dissolution in 1987. With Wolfgang Müller and Nikolaus Utermöhlen, she tried to step into the (post) punk in the West Berlin of the 80s of Neo-Dada, Pop Art, Happening, and vice versa. In that field between art and pop that also played bands such as Palais Schaumburg, collapsing new buildings, FSK in Germany and Pop Group, Cabaret Voltaire and Throbbing Gristle International.
Chicken schnitzel with potato puree, vegetables and cheese cream sauce: only 3.20 euros!
A central exhibit is “in leather”. Kruse has covered the live set-up of her band, including the almost iconic tea kettle, with leather. The superficial focation through the semi-elastic fabric leather evokes thoughts about this new order of things, and such refigurations of order by showing their devouring with chance, absurdity and contingency makes the retrospective imposed and contemplative even in the weaker moments.
One of these weaker moments is the picture “9 months, Image I-IV-10 children”, which could be commented on with Adorno: “Shadow of self-sufficient radicalism of art is its harmlessness, the absolute color composition borders on the wallpaper pattern.” But the penchant for the handicrafts of the late phase is broken by other work, such as “The display-48 colors”, with only a little imagination the quasi model one still Realizing building in the Hansaviertel, or “Neukölln – what there is about the Kottbusser Damm”. Here Kruse describes impressions of a walk from the Kottbusser Tor to Hermannplatz in 2003. The main focus here on the medical practices, business, the tremendous collection of goods and its prices, the Kruse in fact, recorded in fact, and is happy with special offers in intonation. The price for the chicken schnitzel with potato puree, vegetables and cheese cream sauce makes the price particularly attracted: 3.20 euros. But smile quickly passes when the social structure is considered, which continuously multiplies the costs of life and consistently restricts access to the means of money for the wage work. Kruse also opens up his eyes in a casual manner for this order.
A second degree order comes to light in Kruse’s latest work, in which she has the present and past communicate with each other. The two sentences “How are you now” and “I’m doing well” are brought to the gallery wall in various forms, they are from the context of the two LPS “Our Debut” and “Six” by the deadly Doris, which were created in the 80s. If these are played at the same time, there is a new, a third album. The clear ideas of the cultural industry of (factory) unity, question-response schemes, publication cycles are broken in the changed interaction of time, space and material, a self-reflective order.
The Käthe-Kruse retrospective “Now everything is fine” can still be seen in the Berlin Gallery until June 16.