Horst Ademeit – Observer of “Cold Rays”

angie — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 20:08:40 +0000

Horst Ademeit, Untitled, 2003, Polaroid with pen, 4 1/3 x 3 1/2 in. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Susanne Zander, Cologne

White Columns has a solo exhibition for the Dusseldorf-based outsider artist Horst Ademeit (b. 1937). Mr. Ademeit’s body of work is more like a body of evidence that documents “cold rays” in his environment. These documents are a series of polaroid pictures that have painstakingly written notes in all of the margins. I imagine the content would produce a full page if typewritten. They are illegible without a microscope.

I am not sure that Ademeit is trying to make art; in fact, it is hard to believe he lives on his own and takes care of himself.

Ademeit seems tortured by his all-consuming paranoia. Apparently his delusions have escalated so that he wears 3,000 small wood spheres in his orfices (reminiscent of a character from Jan Svankmeyer’s Conspirators of Pleasure).

Ademeit’s polaroids are vaguely similar to work by fellow German artist Hans-Peter Feldmann, they share a similar banality in composition with captions that lead to the “back story.” (see car radio below.) In Feldmann’s case, without the title the image would not “read.” Ademeit faces the same dilemma in his documentation.

Hans-Peter Feldmann Pictures of car radios taken while good music was playing 2004 Detail Courtesy of 303 Gallery New York

Although not an artist, the challenges Mr. Ademeit faces are similar to an artist. I especially appreciate his choice of the polaroid medium in a desire for authenticity, to present evidence that has not been altered or tampered in the way regular film or digital images can be. He has built a system of complex relationships in the world he sees in the small radius around his apartment, so that even scaffolding becomes a subject of inquiry. However, his perception is sensitive to the extreme – a scary world where making art is of least concern.

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