ENGLISH: Fiona Ackerman aus der Wunderkammer des Friedrich Meckseper

WHITE BRUSH GALLERYAndré Schnaudt

Fiona AckermanA u s d e r W u n d e r k a m m e r d e s

Friedrich Meckseper

‘Order is one half of life’ – the other is: art?

Christine Kremers-Lenz

Translated by Kerstin Stuerzbecher

The Use of Order

The sense and purpose of order for our everyday life/existence is evident: order creates orientation/focus/direction – it is how we find things which are organized and stored according to a specific system of order, for instance the socks in the closets of organized people are organized according to criteria of colour, thickness, preference. Furthermore, order makes things and events predictable – we can count on the fact that events arranged according to a schedule will most likely occur, our airplane will transport us from A to B at a specified time. In addition the airplane - hopefully – also functions reliably, because the mechanical and electronic parts of a machine as well function together in accordance with a determined plan. However, we can neither reflect on things nor fly anywhere if the organs of our body do not cooperate in an orderly manner so that they ensure the maintenance of the vital functions of our organism. This order is, in the truest sense of the word, vital.

Many other examples could be found, common to all these systems of order – be they typological, method-ological, mechanical or organic - is that they are only robust if they are supplied with energy. Without our daily effort the socks would increasingly enter a state of chaos, airplanes would no longer fly and our bodies would quickly fail. All systems of order are threatened by entropy.

< Atelier Friedrich Meckseper 2012Foto: Fiona Ackerman

Order in Art

In nature forms and structures exist that are arranged according to particular principles of composition. The symmetry of formations in animate and inanimate nature right down to the microcosm, the harmonious rhythm, the chronological order of rock formations and sedimentary deposits, for example, lead us to regard nature as an artist. We could conceive of works of art as new creations by humans, based on order- and con-struction principles from nature.

On the other hand, we are accustomed to view artists, particularly modern artists, as people who question the familiar systems of order inherent to their art, suspend them, possibly even destroy them, but definitely assert perspectives and concepts that are incompatible with our familiar ideas of order. Even though we assume the motives for these subversive activities to be diverse, it should also be noted that art has a certain kinship with science, as modern physics dissolves our old world view as well. Nature appears to us as a lawful orderly succession of cause and effect within a stable monitor-ing system. This has very little to do with the observa-tions and hypotheses of modern physicists.

Now there are also artists whose intention appears to be to take our need for order seriously, to vividly illustrate it and to critically-humorous comment on it, that is to say to create expressly personal orders that deviate from the natural viewing conditions. In doing so, along with the various systems of order, come also methods of measure into play. Are the systems of order and their instruments of measure as objective as they appear? How can I uncover measuring processes or their failure? How do things change when I take them out of their natural context of order and put them into a different environment? Where does order end and where does chaos begin?

Combination and Composition

In the paintings and etchings of Friedrich Meckseper as well as in the paintings by Canadian artist Fiona Ackerman order is a central theme. Both combine things, though in representational painting yet in a manner that produces new, unfamiliar relations of order and therefore alienates old and familiar things. For instance, Meck-seper’s instruments of measure, such as clocks or parts thereof, appear in unfamiliar surroundings and thereby symbolize measuring processes, which perhaps have taken place, have yet to take place or failed in one way or another. Ackerman utilizes elements from observed nature through artefacts and objects of everyday use in her paintings. The order of these various elements hap-pens on the one hand in accordance with the principles of art composition, the harmonious division of the pic-torial space, on the other hand these placed things become protagonists of a narrative, main and supporting actors in a thus animated pictorial space. At the same time Ackerman also includes, in addition to her own visual elements, the studios and ”inventory” of other artists. In the current exhibit she references the world of images by Friedrich Meckseper, whose workshop, after a visit there, she likens in a double sense to a cabinet of curi-osities: here - just as in Fürst Metternich’s cabinet of curiosities in his castle in Königswart – found objects and collectors’ items are displayed, composed in a high-ly personal arrangement. By means of this order the objects also gain a life of their own, they relate to one another and tell stories which Ackerman wants to make visible in her paintings.

Leuchtturm 1981Friedrich Meckseper.

Format: 59.5 x 31.5 cm

Strichätzung, Aquatinta, Aussprengtechnik, Kaltnadel, Mouette, Roulette auf Kupfer.3 Platten, 4 Farben: gelb, rot, graugrün, grünschwarz.Auflage: 100 + XX numerierte und signierte ExamplareDruck: Heiner Bunte, LilienthalVerlag: Galerie Steinrötter, Münster

Zusätzlich existieren 9 unterschiedliche, signierte Zustandsdrucke.

Foto: Dennys Hill Fotografie | Köln

Meckseper’s compositional constructions

a) Order and its Measure

If we rely on the title then we are not going to find what we expect in the etching “Leuchtturm” (“Light-house”). It appears as if the artist interprets the term differently, even though not in a less literal sense of the word: that what is glowing there is a smokestack. The measure, which Meckseper critically and ironically lever-ages, is the order system for terms, which assigns some objects to certain terms and excludes others. ‘Lighthouse’ and ‘smokestack’ belong, with regard to their function (guide for ships and discharge of surplus energy respect-ively), to different conceptual orders. That it is the smokestack, of all things, with its connotation of air pollution and destruction of nature, which is competing with the rather romantic sujet of the lighthouse, is in every respect clever, irrelevant whether we assume the artist to have civilization-critical motives or to simply take delight in playing with order. The second measure turned upside down by Meckseper is the measure of length: next to the lighthouse-smokestack the artist pos-itioned a measuring scale, which at a certain point loses its measure – above the number 122 is the number 23. Herewith, Meckseper appears to subtly indicate that a measure can quickly be lost: just as the ladder in the painting is far too short for someone to reach the top of the tower, so can other attempts at measurement fail. The smokestack (and its effects) appears to no longer be measurable.

b) Is there a measure for eternity?

Depending on how I order things, more or less rigid systems are created: there exist solid, crystalline struc-tures just the same as volatile, fluid formations which can quickly dissolve. The more rigid the order, the more violent is its dissolution. For instance, I have to smash a stone to destroy its form. Measuring instruments as well base themselves on a firm order: the underlying scale of a measuring tape, but also timekeeping, defines distinct distance relations as fundamental to the measur-ing process.

Labyrinth 1998 Friedrich Meckseper Format: 31.5 x 39 cm

Strichätzung, Aquatinta auf Kupfer.3 Platten, 4 Farben: gelb, orange, grünschwarz, schwarz.Auflage: 100 + XX numerierte und signierte ExamplareDruck: Heiner Bunte LilienthalVerlag: Galerie Peerlings, Krefeld

Zusätzlich existieren 9 unterschiedliche, signierte Zustandsdruckeund 5 signierte Einzeldrucke der Platten.6 Examplare wurden in einer schwarz-weiss-Version gedruckt und als E.A. bezeichnet und signiert.


To whichever deliberations the spectator of the etching “Labyrinth” and the reader of this text feel inspired, the etching inspires me to reflect on time.

I see the result of a futile measuring process, or rath-er a process of decline or destruction: only half of a stone slab, leaning against a wall and engraved with a labyrinth, is present. In front of it, we see components of a clock (the frame of the casing and a balance spring), as well as a sphere being positioned in the foreground. Labyrinth and clock are broken down; in this condition they can no longer give direction.

This arrangement tempts a few thoughts about time and linear measurability: there are things that escape the measuring process: the circumference of a sphere. That even time cannot measure all things is also shown by the labyrinth. It as well opposes the concept of a linear order, as underlies timekeeping, and can count simul-taneously as a symbol of a different concept of time: just as the paths in a labyrinth do not run straight, neither does time. Let’s assume the routes symbolize elapsing or already elapsed time, not only in one direction, but also left or right, behind or in front, depending on where in the labyrinth I am located. Seen in this way the laby-rinth symbolizes a concept of time in which the reference point must be continuously newly determined to act as positioning point – and therefore a concept of time of which a human being, who is oriented toward meaning-ful courses of time, becomes occasionally painfully aware: each change of position is a new beginning and a possible false path, an objective measure of time im-possible.

Time is also conceivable as a cycle as in the rhythmic recurrence of particular events, for instance the change of seasons. In this conception it has, like the sphere, a circular shape and its system of order is less rigid, as it is no longer determined by numerically defined distance relations.

For whichever concept of time I decide myself, constant is neither the stone nor the clock. Only the sphere is complete.

c) Order and Play

When I consider order from the protagonist’s perspec-tive, it results in the following deliberations: depending on the aspects according to which I order things, the quantity of things I can integrate in my system of order is larger or smaller. I can also, if I find a common over-riding perspective, a principium comparationis, bring order to highly disparate things, for instance by putting them in a chronological order. The purpose I pursue in doing so may not necessarily be significant: I could be doing it simply to enjoy composition, acting from pure playfulness. Especially during the activity I could pos-sibly find completely new perspectives and views of things and look at them from a different angle.

At first glance the four structures in the etching “Transformation” appear as viewpoints of one and the same object, a house. At second glance we recognize that the four figures may not consist out of the same material (at least the surface texture is different). They could possibly be the components of a house, viewed

Transformation 1993Friedrich Meckseper

Format:13.5 x 9.5 cm Aquatinta, Strichätzung, Roulette auf Kupfer.4 x 2 Platten, je 3 Farben: gelb, graugrün, schwarzAuflage: 120 + XX numerierte und signierte ExamplareDruck: Heiner Bunte, LilienthalVerlag: Galerie Steinrötter, Münster

Zusätzlich existieren 7 unterschiedliche, signierte Zustandsdrucke und2 signierte Einzeldrucke der Platten.


from several vantage points. However what organizes the sequence is neither the affiliation of the figures as part of a whole nor a kind of functional interaction. Our search for an underlying meaning or purpose for transformation remains fruitless. Meckseper bases the sequence solely on variations of form; breadth and height of the individual figures remain even as does the position of the now familiar sphere. It is the latter which undergoes a visibly directed process of transformation; it moves increasingly into the shadow. Whether the sphere ever symbolized any-thing, and if then what, is left to the imagination of the spectator: is this as well the passage of time? Is the increasing shadow accompanied by an alteration in the surface structure?

^ Atelier Friedrich Meckseper 2012Foto: Fiona Ackerman

A highly personal world order

A particularly playful and enormously creative meth-od producing order, is found in an invention by Meck-seper, which the protagonist Pong in the novel “Pong redivivus” by Sybille Lewitscharoff, Meckseper’s wife, wants to utilize: Pong, plastered and nearly immobil-ized in a hospital bed, badly tormented by the soulless hospital (order) procedures, wishes for an “adversity catcher”, to catch exactly those events which do not fit into his very personal idea how things should be or-dered. Who would not like something like that!

Fiona Ackerman cleans up

In the painting “The Player, 2013” we enter a space in which all elements are side by side nice and neatly ordered whereby, as is clearly visible, this refers to the painting itself and not the workshop in which the paint-ing was created. As if lined up on a shelf, we find in

cosy proximity such disparate objects as scissors, play-ing cards in various sizes, a shower curtain, a chair with a towel hanging over its backrest, various parcels and books. All these objects do not show any consideration for each other. They do not respect realistic proportions, they partially overlap, pushing themselves into the fore-ground and even defy gravity. They assert their indi-viduality. We also find the now familiar measuring in-struments from Meckseper’s world of images, here a folded up yardstick (disabled) as well as a measuring instrument related to electricity. Turned over playing cards and the back of an easel create curiosity for what lies behind; but even this superficially well sorted order does not produce peace – it also appears to be linked with an intention to hide something – and at the same time gives a clue to Meckseper’s joy at playing with the elements of an image.

“My treatment of Meckseper’s studio is a response to his practice and to what I experienced to be his per-

Atelier Fiona Ackerman 2013Foto: Fiona Ackerman

sonal sense of order. If Meckseper’s order is one of isolation, and classification, my own order in these paint-ings is one of integration, and reference. Where Meck-seper orders the object in space, I look to order the object as space.”

While Meckseper, in Ackerman’s words, liberates things from their existing context, then isolates them and shows them in a new environment, a new space, Ackerman freshly integrates the things in her paintings. By conceiving them not in the space, but as space, she gains a new freedom. Liberated from the constraints of conceptual classification, freed also from the pending decay and entropy in real space and in real time, she can “clean up”, can play, as she likes.

Therefore it is rhythm and certainly not a librarian’s sense of order, nor the strict codes of philosophical or scientific methods, that guide her. In the pictured “shelf” things appear as themes, which repeat in form and colour in harmonious sequence, but also vary, which step into the foreground, to then accentuate from the background the appearance of their successors. Just as in a symphony the main theme is repeated and varied during the differ-ent movements and by the various groups of instruments, so “functions” here, for instance, the white form on the painting’s left border in various contexts, as well as in various spatial positions in each context in which it ap-pears.

Arranged in this way things make suggestions, they

produce expectations and they pose puzzles. Rhythm connects the protagonists. The spectators assume the task of telling the stories, in which the things are in-volved. There are few limits set to their imagination.

“Where there is order there is rhythm. While the paint-ings in this exhibition respond to Meckseper’s sense of order, it is a sense of play that rings in the silences be-tween our work.”

The Player 2013Fiona Ackerman

80 x 300 cmÖl auf Leinwand

Fabrik 1971Friedrich Meckseper

Format: 57 x 47 cm

Strichätzung, Kaltnadel, Aquatinta, Sandpapier auf Kupfer3 Platten, 3 Farben: gelb, blau, schwarz.Auflage: 100 + XX numerierte und signierte ExamplareDruck: Druckgrafik Kätelhön, WamelVerlag: Galerie Wilbrand, Köln


Revolution, 2015Fiona Ackerman


Aus der Wunderkammer des Friedrich Meckseper

I visited Friedrich Meckseper’s Berlin studio in the summer of 2012. After carefully documenting his meticulously organized painting and printing studios, I was invited into his home to explore his many shelves and cabinets, filled with collections of antique trinkets and novelties collected over the course of his life. These objects, plucked by the artist from their places of dis-covery, stand side by side on their shelves, often grouped by kind, yet also somehow in isolation. Each object tells a story, carries a history. Many objects I recognize from his paintings where they’ve been recontextualized, assigned a new timeless purpose.

My treatment of Meckseper’s studio is a response to his practice and to what I experienced to be his personal sense of order. If Meckseper’s order is one of isolation, and classification, my own order in these paintings is one of integration, and reference. Where Meckseper orders the object in space, I look to order the object as space.

Where there is order there is rhythm. While the paint-ings in this exhibition respond to Meckseper’s sense of order, it is a sense of play that rings in the silences between our work.

Fiona Ackerman2015

Atelier Friedrich Meckseper 2012Foto: Fiona Ackerman

Document X 2013Fiona Ackerman


Fiona Ackerman

1978 Born in mo, studierte von 1998 - 2000 an der Concordia University Montreal

Malerei und von 2000 - 2002 am Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in

Vancouver Visual Arts. 2012 bezog sie für ein halbes Jahr ein Atelier in

Berlin. Von dort aus besuchte sie verschiedene Ate-liers in Deutschland lebender Künstler. Das Konzept sich auf diese Weise quasi ethnographisch auf die Welt anderer Künstler einzulassen, hat sie bereits in fünf Ausstellungen realisiert. Diese Ausstellung ist durch ihren Besuch bei Friedrich Meckseper in Berlin inspiriert worden.

Fiona Ackerman lebt und arbeitet in Vancouver.

Einzelausstellungen 2005 Galerie Jürgen Kaspar, Nürnberg 2008 View Art Gallery, Victoria, CA2009 Diane Farris Gallery, Vancouver, CA2010 Parts Gallery, Toronto, CA2011 Herringer Kiss Gallery, Calgary, CA2012 Winsor Gallery, Vancouver, CA Galerie Claus Steinrötter, Müster2013 White Brush Gallery, Düsseldorf2014 Herringer Kiss Gallery, Calgary, CA Galerie Pfaff, Schwarzenbruck/Nürnberg Winsor Gallery, Vancouver, CA2015 White Brush Gallery, Düsseldorf p|m Gallery Toronto, CA

Memorabilia 2013Fiona Ackerman


Schiefe Ebene 2007Friedrich Meckseper

Format: 25 x 26 cm

Strichätzung, Aquatinta auf Kupfer2 Platten, 2 Farben: grünschwarz, schwarz.Auflage: 80 + X numerierte und signierte ExamplareDruck: Heiner Bunte, LilienthalVerlag: Galerie Peerlings, Krefeld

Zusätzlich existieren 6 unterschiedliche, signierte Zustandsdrucke und 2 Einzeldrucke der Platten.


Drei Kugeln 1969Friedrich Meckseper

Format: 30 x 40 cm

Strichätzung, Aquatinta, Kaltnadel, Sandpapier auf Kupfer2 Platten, 3 Farben: gelb, rotgelb, schwarz.Auflage: 80 + XV numerierte und signierte Examplare.Druck: Willy Steinert, WeingartenVerlag: Gesellschaft der Freunde junger Kunst, Baden-Baden

Jahresgabe 1969 der Gesellschaft der Freunde junger Kunst, Baden-Baden


Orologium phantasticum 1966Friedrich Meckseper

Format: 50 x 40 cm

Strichätzung, Aquatinta, Sandpapier auf Kupfer2 Platten, 2 Farben: gelb, schwarz.Auflage: 50 + V numerierte und signierte Examplare.Druck: Druckgrafik Kätelhön, WamelVerlag: Galerie Die Insel, Worpswede

Blatt 5 der Mappe “Sieben Weltwunder”.Erschienen 1966 im Verlag der Galerie Die Insel, Worpswede.


Friedrich Meckseper

Born in Bremen in 1936, Friedrich Meckseper was raised in Stuttgart where from 1952 – 1955, he underwent a locomotive engineering apprenticeship. From 1957-1959, Meckseper studied at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste under Karl Rössing, and at the Hochschule für bildende Künste in Berlin under Wolf Hoffmann.

Interrested in technology, he designed and built a steamboat (1972-74) and crossed the Alps in a hot air balloon five times (1978 – 1986). From 1961 – 1984, Meckseper lived at Worpswede, an atist colony near Bremen. He now lives and works in Berlin.

The list of his exhibitions (solo and group exhibitions in major museums and galleries at home and abroad, participations in international biennales, prizes, etc.) is so extensive and far reaching in scope (not to mention the publications) that it would far excede the limitations of this catalog to begin to list them.

In September 2013, Friedrich Meckseper an his wife Sibylle Lewitscharoff published the novel Pong Redi-vivus, a sequel to Lewitscharoff 1998 story, Pong.

Portrait 1 2015Fiona Ackerman

49 x 49 cmÖl auf Leinwand.

Portrait 2 2015Fiona Ackerman

49 x 49 cm Öl auf Leinwand.

nächste Seite:Atelier 1974Friedrich Meckseper

Format: 43.5 x 39 cmStrichUatzung, Kaltnadel, Aquatinta auf Kupfer

1 Platte, schwarz -weissAuflage: 100 + XX numerierte und signierte ExamplareDruck: Druckgrafic Kätelhön, WamelFoto: Dennys Hill Fotografie | Köln

Eröffnung der Ausstellung

Fiona AckermanAus der Wunderkammer des

Friedrich Meckseper

Am Donnerstag, den 19. 03. 2015, um 19 Uhr möchten wir Sie und Ihre Freunde herzlich einladen.

WHITE BRUSH GALLERYAndré Schnaudt

ALTESTADT 13 (Ratingerstr.), D-40213 DüsseldorfTel (+49) 211 367 96 824 und 0211 869 35 680

Öffnungszeiten: Di - Fr 13.00-18.30, Sa.11-16.00,auch So nach Vereinbarung

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ENGLISH: Fiona Ackerman aus der Wunderkammer des Friedrich Meckseper

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