Godless and straight.

Between Idyll and Provocation.

The title Jenny Feldmann gave her exhibition, says very much indeed. It describes precisely what we get to see and at the same time shows her artistic work mania.

“Christkindpumpertklumpertfranzwestbriefetafelhorchtswiesdraussenpumpertaudiinstallationsmusikcollagensprühklebersbenzinwattebausch“

In 2013 a complex room installation by Feldmann titled „Christ child clumping jumber“ was exhibited in the Gallery „Kunst & Handel“ (art & dealing) in Himmelpfortgasse, Vienna. The artwork from 2014 shown in this catalogue is based on this marvelously truthful sculptural installation - an epitome of madness and of children’s craving for Christmas.

Splintered, decomposed and recomposed again, full of references, mental leaps, witty flashes, beauty and ugliness, Jenny Feldmann guides us into her world of collage.

Particularly her formal skills are shown here. With a firm cut she destroys the Christmas symbol, the fir tree. Not randomly or organically, but determined, focused and very accurate in breaking down details, Feldmann uses professional photographies of the installation in the gallery for her collages and her own snapshots from the time she developed the Christmas- tree- sculpture in her studio.

At times she draws the spectator’s complete attention to something very small like chromatic crystals that emerge out of the snow or like “rohrschachtic” moths that flatter across the letters of Franz West.

At other times she zooms single details until they appear as oversized pictures: a statuette that looks like Madonna or a shabby box with „Josef“ written on it, and hence is Josef.

The advent calendar -without title- is represented by the fir tree we know quite well by now. Photographies of people, who perhaps take an important place in Feldmann‘s life, perhaps not, are arranged on it. She herself is of course the Christ child– a title that recurs in some other works- and the number 24 on the calendar.

And that is what I particularly like about Feldmann‘s use of the word itself. The Christ child is the highest throning child we know. But at the same time we use the word "Christkindl" for describing someone who is naive, credulous and a little bit crazy. “Don’t be such a ‚christkindl’“(„Sei doch kein Christkindl‘“) goes the phrase.

Feldmann uses attributes and symbols of a world religion that influence our geographical and spiritual regions. We live in between these regions; Feldmann arranges them casually into a cultural mountain of waste.

She likes to mention the term „anti-art“. Of course it is art, but one that breaks with traditional mannerisms, with big statements, with sophisticated techniques. A form of art that is allowed to use everything and permits everything: dirty und exploitable, sentimental and ice-cold, conglomerated and spit out. Feldmann piles trivial things that make our reality up until they appear as a sur-reality. Not only the chosen topic but also the composition of each picture show her surrealistic approach. The original theme of the Christmas hassle merges with her formal artistic qualities: The outcome is not merely a picture of Christmas anymore, but truly a piece of art.

Overlayings, stringing, interweavings create completely new impressions of space. The geometrically accurate, meticulous little photo shreds form new figures, new Christmas trees.

An important part in this is Feldmann’s use of colours : the way the graphic elements are set- black and white or chromatic-, how the background grasps into the foreground, how space holes are built on snow-white or signal red and allow the spectator to catch a glimpse of something unknown and uncertain. Is there something godless glittering between the gold bars or is it just a soothing wood of trashy gifts? Two stripes in different shades of red form a cross and make room for a deep cave where the tree sculpture grows as stalagmite into stalactites.

One artwork forms a cross and is under-titled after famous music pieces and covered by Feldmann with poems by Goethe. Everything is carefully selected and fitted together: the poems that are copied by hand, the music that is listened to while working, the photos that are cut into pieces and put together again. Worlds of thoughts and worlds of experiences are connected and stacked.

In further works she reprocesses letters from Franz West[1] to graphic layers of composition. The colours of the pens, the nervous flow of his handwriting and even the various staining of the paper become the formalistic elements, which Feldmann uses with somnambulistic precision.

The works in this catalogue appear to me like precious laces, like cobwebs spun out of the big fir tree ball, not only a Christmas conglomerate but also a labyrinth of Feldmann’s thinking, obeying the strict rules of art.

Feldmann’s concept of godlessness should not be overlooked. God-less as opposed to God-full, perhaps? God who is missing in the godfull Christmas celebration, his presence that we want to enforce? His missing in some states of being of Feldmann herself? But then again the feeling of the possibility of eternity, of „fully being here“, and the imagination fired through his presence in obsessive times? Or is one able to find the balance between depression and mania, enter the stage, play one’s tragic-comic part and step down with death?

Life between naive belief and clairvoyant cynicism: that is the way the Christ child clumbers with its lumber.

Sophie Geretsegger

September 2014

Teaches at the University of Applied Arts, Vienna