Ulla von Brandenburg - CHORSINGSPIEL

Ulla von Brandenburg’s oeuvre takes diverse forms – films, drawings, murals, objects, installations, etc. However, each of her works stands as an extension or an element of a larger staging space. Before enrolling in Hamburg’s University of Fine Arts in Germany, the artist studied scenography and still has a strong penchant for the world of theatre. Curtains, whether directly borrowed from the theatre and mounted on a stage or taking the form of colourful quilts, are recurring elements in her work. These pieces of fabric – part sculpture, part painting – also serve to shape or frame the exhibition space. They create nooks and crannies or establish pathways to projection spaces.

Film and video, techniques the artist frequently uses, paradoxically allow her to reactivate pre-theatre forms, such as the classical tragedy. This interest in models typically viewed as outdated is a recurrent theme for Ulla von Brandenburg. Her preferred iconography is linked to the turning point between the 19th century’s preoccupation with the occult and the rationality of the 20th century. Spiritualist photography, the shift from hypnosis to psychoanalysis, tarot cards and secret societies commonly appear in her creations. By embracing a symbolist imagination anew, the artist revives the mysticism of the fin-de-siecle movement, as well as the utopia of the “Gesamtkunstwerk” (total work of art), as well as the unacknowledged and repressed roots of modernity.

Chorsingspiel gathers two video installations which belong to the Collection. Singspiel (2009) refers to a form of opera in Germany in the late 18th century. Both a silent film and a soundtracked work, it depicts a family meal uniting a dozen guests of varying ages and a strange performance in an outdoor theatre, where Ulla von Brandenburg herself performs two songs, recalling the concerts performed during film screenings in the early 20th century. Chorspiel (2010), also a black-and-white movie, uses the vocabulary of performance, theatre, and painting, synthesized in a tableau vivant incorporating the choruses of Greek tragedies. These two artworks, presented in Japan for the first time, pay a vibrant homage to the multifaceted œuvre of this major German artist.