Friedrich Andreoni: Remember me when you enter your Kingdom

Installation views  © Galerie Met and Friedrich Andreoni.

Galerie Met is pleased to present the solo exhibition Remember me when you enter your Kingdom by Friedrich Andreoni. In his works, most of which are new productions for the exhibition, the artist focuses on those intangible states that hover between the possible and the real: the potentiality of events and occurrences between and around us. According to the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben, potentiality becomes visible above all when there is a lack of knowledge and certainty: in a gap, a tear, a wound. Andreoni draws associatively on Agamben’s writings and examines the phenomenon of potentiality in a wide range of artistic media. How do two people find each other? What physical forces might determine love? Does happiness also owe itself to a certain faith?

In his book The Kingdom and the Garden (The Italien List), published in 2019, Agamben analyses the numerous theological and philosophical interpretations of the Garden of Eden, taking a look at the Bible itself, for example the crucifixion scene. With the saying ‘Remember me when you enter your Kingdom’, a crucified thief addresses Jesus, who responds to him redemptively: ‘Today you will be with me in paradise’ (Luke 23:42-43). As the title of the exhibition, the quote refers to vulnerable states such as hopelessness, grief and profound danger—barely recognisable as such, but often vivid spaces for possible changes of direction. Only to a certain extent do such transformations of state owe themselves to individual initiative; they are always subject to external forces that make the further trajectory of their course unpredictable.

Friedrich Andreoni plays with the tension between movement and stillness, the tangible and the ephemeral. The exhibited works include sculpture, drawing, photography, video work and sound installation. In their appearance, they are reduced to the essentials, as the artist translates his thoughts into an abstract and minimalist language, whereby he only processes the materials to the extent that appears necessary for the realisation of his ideas. The scope for interpretation in each work reflects the intrinsic indeterminacy of potentiality.

In Intimacy (Radar Domes), two objects dance on a white pedestal, rotating around their own axis. They develop a synchronicity, from which they break away again after a short time. The objects originate from the roof of a ship, where they are used to scan and measure the surroundings above the water’s surface. Andreoni robs them of their actual function by breaking open their shell-like housings, unveiling their inner mechanism as a ballet mécanique. In the sound installation Sometimes, an underwater loudspeaker hangs from the ceiling, transforming the exhibition visit into a waterless dive. A 1968 version of the ballad Sometimes I feel like a motherless child by the American singer Odetta can be heard. On a research trip to France, Andreoni recorded the song in a church, a place of community, togetherness, and cohesion. But what happens when there is a painful loss? According to one interpretation, the repetition of the word ‘sometimes’ offers a certain amount of hope.

Another kinetic sculpture is Incredulity (Car window), in which a car window performs its only possible gesture, moving up and down. Here, however, it cannot open or close an associated body. Unleashed from the system, it explores its surroundings, but in so doing it seems fragile and exposed to the void. The gesture is reminiscent of the well-known motif of ‘Doubting Thomas’ in Christian art, which also appears in the exhibition in the form of a plaster cast of an ivory relief from the 10th century. In it, Jesus is at the centre of the scene, showing his stigmata; below him, Thomas, pricking the wound with his index finger. Although the apostle overcomes his crisis of faith in the scene, a crack remains forever: for Christianity, doubting is an incurable wound, at least as long as faith and reason are diametrically opposed.

In addition to these motifs the artist’s intimate experiences are (perhaps) also reflected in his work. Maybe shows two people in a small-format photo booth portrait. The disproportionately large passe-partout constructs an open space that symbolises the many possibilities: Who are these people? What future did they step into after this unique moment was captured? The realm of imagination and supposed certainty is finite, as the unabashedly left-behind ‘Maybe’, which calls everything into question, makes clear. We will never know what happened to the two smiling people because the infinite possibilities can never be grasped. The same applies to the countless constellations that two bodies can enter into with each other, regardless of whether they are human, static object, or operating machine. Two figures and one anchor point series provides a fragmentary impression of this by drawing two almost identical forms on each sheet, which enter into relationship with one another in a constantly changing manner. The sequence of sheets could go on indefinitely without ever reaching a destination. Strung together, the drawings resemble a storyboard, which is usually subject to a dramaturgy and thus suggests a development.

In the video work Caduta Libera, cameras fall out of the sky, as the dizzying change in the moving image evinces. Up becomes down, down becomes up, and the different perspectives rapidly merge. Although the camera is pulled in one direction by the Earth’s gravitational pull, the wind intervenes in the free fall. The rushing images are to a certain extent left to chance; their distortions also tell us about the limits of technology. The loop of a few minutes repeatedly captures individual images of deformed reality. Whether the abstract and painterly motifs are an attempt to get closer to the questions of life, or whether they resemble a standstill, remains open. However the camera turns and falls, in the end it will only leave us with what it has seen last. Friedrich Andreoni captures the living. His works play with the ideas of expectation and event, posing existential questions about the (im)possible. 

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Text by Philipp Lange