THEY'RE LOOKING DIRECTLY AT YOU. With over-sized eyes fixed on those who behold them. Sad or earnest, rarely smiling, "The facial expression is of great significance", says Rolf Hengesbach, the gallery owner who opened this unique exhibition at his space in Vogelsangstraße on Sunday. The exhibition "They are looking at us" consists of around 80 drawings realised by a Russian-Jewish painter, Olga Stozhar. The 50-year-old artist based this project is based on photographs of victims of the concentration camps or Warsaw Ghetto uprising. "What you see here is intrinsically linked to activities for Holocaust Day (January 27) and will not be on view in a comparable form again", said a visibly-emotional Hengesbach.
I met her nine years ago in Berlin. The Wuppertal gallery owner was looking for artists for an exhibition and was interested in Stozhar who, at that point in time, usually worked on projects inspired by the notion of free-spirited global musical culture. "Her work is lively; the lines appear to be in motion without a beginning or end, creating a degree of abstraction from the person the picture is based on", according to Hengesbach as he explained his interest. This marked the beginning of an acquaintance that gained momentum two and a half years ago. Stozhar contacted him to present her new project in which she emotionally evokes the memory of those murdered by the Nazis by paying tribute to them. Hengesbach had concerned himself with the persecution of the Jews as a young man in the 1970s, and agreed with Adorno's famed statement that art was no longer possible after the barbarity, that poetry had become impossible. Stozhar has found a way, through her approach to drawing these portraits, to imbue each work with individual expression, avoiding superficiality. As Hengesbach explained, "these pictures are not plaintive accusations, but, on the contrary, pictures concerned with the basic issue of who these people were. Those beholding them can them develop a sense of empathy which was absent at the time."
Stozhar, who lives in St. Petersburg, Berlin and Israel, has realised several thousand of these drawings. In the process, she has largely isolated herself from the outside world and focussed on her work. The artist and gallery owner viewed this enormous volume of fragile works-on-paper, as Stozhar was looking for a special framework to present the works in. Hengesbach realised that his gallery could provide a small-scale venue for a first presentation. The artist mounted her pictures grouped as blocks of three, which highlights the individuality of each person portrayed; this dynamic, by showing some of the portraits together, adds tension. "Every block of pictures is, both formally and in terms of content, of significance."
The pictures are depictions of older and younger men and women as well as children; all generations are represented. Their faces fill each page, which is around A3 size. The lines are thin, jagged, curved, and then thicken or become fainter, sometimes creating negative spaces or becoming so intense that the process of drawing crinkles or even rips the paper. Stozhar does not use cross-hatching as she draws, but where her lines come close together, the effect accentuateseach individual's expression. These pictures are of people subjected to horrific circumstances: they are sad and evoke sympathy but do not beg accusingly.
The exhibition in Wuppertal is to be followed by a publication. Shows in Israel will then be followed by other exhibitions in German museums.
MONIKA WERNER-STAUDE
