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10/9/2010

Simon Willems

Elaine Levy Project, Bruxelles

Altitude Sickness was conceived in response to Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest at Berchtesgaden and its subsequent conversion to a tourist restaurant following World War Two. Initially presented to Hitler in 1939, as a gift from senior Nazi officials on the occasion of his 50thbirthday, it has become synonymous with a particular archive of wartime footage. For Willems this image of the Führer in the bosom of alpine serenity was not insignificant. It was his earliest memory of Hitler on television and one that presented a hideous antithesis to the realities of war and the 'Final Solution’. Within a broader thematic of misplaced context, it was preceded directly by the painting Alpine Review. What appears to be an Albino Darth Vader, meekly foregrounded on the steps leading up to Kehlsteinhaus, becomes a warped reference to Nazi eugenics and Manichean clichés. Star Wars becomes a strategic link to the real history that informed a movie’s fiction. As a Storm-trooper gazes into the Führer’s fireplace at Kehlsteinhaus in Meltdown, echoing his Nazi namesakes, his abandonment recalls iconic footage of Hitler himself at this mountain retreat.

For Willems however, the project has a contemporary imperative in how we recognise convenience and consumption. Beyond the mammoth irony of its switch from Nazi teahouse to tourist eatery, the place has an indexical importance, in the position and function of history to meet our needs as consumers. The burger becomes an aggressive metaphor for wholesale consumption. The source material for these paintings collapses between different realities and points of emphasis. Doctored footage from photographic archives informs a revised history of the retreat’s subsequent makeover. A pizza birthday cake is morphed into a found image of Nazi chefs presenting their culinary efforts to Hitler, on the same day he was given Kehlsteinhaus by senior officials.

The project is a multi-layered excavation of the erasure and re-appropriation of history. Its formal properties thus acknowledge both its anachronism and porous materiality. Bleached out and grainy, like faded records, we are at once made aware of the passing of time in all its exposure.

Elaine Levy Project
Rue Fourmoisstraat 9 - 1050 Brussels
Hours: Thursday to saturday, 2 to 7pm and by appointment.

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