“Nachleben”
2024
210 x 120 cm
materials:
oil paint, linen, spruce wood
The notes on the piece of paper are written in a special cursive handwriting called "Sütterlin". This font was developed in 1911 by the graphic artist Ludwig Sütterlin on behalf of the Prussian Ministry of Culture and Education. It was officially introduced in Prussia in 1915 and remained part of the school curriculum throughout the 1920s and 1930s. In 1941, the Nazis banned the teaching of Sütterlin handwriting in schools.
In Germany today, only a few people still know how to write “Sütterlin”. They are gradually dying out. The person who wrote the shopping list must have learned it as a schoolchild—and thus be around 90 years old. Such an old person still going grocery shopping independently is a rarity in itself.
Equally surprising is the unusual selection of products:
The work "Nachleben" (Afterlife) is based on an objet trouvé: a shopping list that was attached to the handle of a shopping cart. The artist found it in the mid-2010s, took it, and archived it – being certain that he would one day create a work from it. This shopping list seemed like a window into the past, a connection between the distant yesterday and the present.
The products themselves contain the following essential nutrients: vitamin C, protein, iron, B vitamins, and sugar. They are among the most essential nutrients of all. The list thus seems like a supply list for the apocalypse, written by "the German," who prepares for bad times, who leaves nothing to chance, who doesn't shy away from the seemingly disgusting, who survives even under the harshest conditions, and who rarely indulges himself.
The original shopping list itself is made of blue paper. The artist maintains this color for his work of art, associating it with heaven—the poetic place of life after death. It is uncertain whether the person who wrote the shopping list is still alive today.
The work “Nachleben” is an anonymous monument to the person and the time he or she comes from.
Blutorangen (blood oranges)
Ingwer (ginger)
Bierschinken (beer ham)
Zungenwurst (tongue sausage)
Nordthy Kekse (Nordthy biscuits)
Schweinenacken (pork neck)
The individual words that make up the food names seem like a clichéd description of the rough, raw, masculine "German" of the past: Blut (blood), Bier (beer), Schinken (ham), Zunge (tongue), Wurst (sausage), Schwein (pork), Nacken (neck). Only Ingwer (ginger), orange, and the Danish Nordthy biscuits are a delicate, almost feminine greeting from the present.