Hans Breeder (1935-2017)
23/01 to 14/02/2016
Gleichapel is honoured to present in Paris for the first time, Hans Breder’s Mindscape, a video installation depicting a vision of the seven chakras (energy centers) of the human body through which life force flows. The video patterns in Mindscape are derived from re-processed footage of movements in dance, slowly morphing and unfolding in response to a sound activating the seven Chakras. Passersby will experience a sensation perhaps unknown to their existence.
Since his nearly 50 year career as an artist, Hans Breder has developed a practice that treats art as an infinite process that evolves across time and space. His latest work investigates the complexity of liminal space. Psychologists define “liminal space” as a place where boundaries diminish where we stand on the threshold, readying ourselves to move across the limits of what we were, into what we are to be. Through art, Breder raises significant questions in the scientific and phenomenological quest to be able to formulate a spiritual understanding of consciousness beyond pure reason. Does art have the power to heal? Much like Joseph Beuys, Breder investigates the healing power of art and its power as a transformative path — from this emerges the imperative to expand art’s boundaries. This is one of the central concerns of Breder’s installation Mindscape.
Mindscape is based on the seven chakras — seven wheels of energy that surround the human body. They channel energy to where it’s needed, for optimal health and wellbeing. Breder combines his research of the body’s energy and physicality with the color spectrum of the seven chakras as they correlate to various tones. Each chakra is a center of activity projecting a particular attitude towards reality — an amplitude or frequency through every cell or fibre of the body. The movement of the dancers’ bodies is inspired by a mesmerising relationship between internal motion and external shape; in Mindscape we see the geometric patterns created by an interaction between movement and sound. Breder made seven videos, one for each Chakra, pointing to the importance of balancing the energy flows between them.
The artist’s longtime preoccupation with the body as a tool to investigate the concepts of «liminal state» and «liminal space» is reflected here through an intervention that illuminates the shifting structures of the nude form in motion. By liminal state, I refer to the term as theorized by French folklorist Arnold Van Gennep, who defined it as a state of transition catalyzed by the social rituals that mark the passage between life’s major stages. In his seminal text Rites de Passage (1908), he noted that, “The universe itself is governed by a periodicity which has repercussions on human life with stages of transition.”
The work of Breder investigates Victor Turner’s expansion of the term, in which “liminality” resonates through both time and space. For Turner, this state of dislocation represents a space of infinite possibility. Perhaps the evolution Mindscape over time acts to reveal a state of heightened awareness, with the kaleidoscopic visualisation of sound waves and energy flows as the body twists into another realm. Every new fact discovered, every new experience or element that we add to our knowledge then enters into the domain of reason.
Since the 1960s, Hans Breder is a multidisciplined artist and one of the first video artists whose work has been included in three Whitney Biennials. Hans Breder is the founder of the Intermedia Program in the School of Art & Art History at the University of Iowa and directed it until his retirement as Distinguished Professor in 2000. The internationally regarded program is built on Breder’s interdisciplinary inclination for intellectual and aesthetic collision. His works are included in numerous museum collections including The Museum of Modern Art and The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York; The National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC and The Neuer Berliner Kunstverein in Berlin.
Recently in New York, Lara Pan presented another version of the work entitled “Mindscape: Subtle Body” by Hans Breder, a collaboration with Carl Skelton, President of Gotham Innovation Greenhouse, New York. In 2010, Hans Breder had his first comprehensive survey exhibition in the United States at WhiteBox, NY, curated by Jarett Gregory which then travelled to the Ostwall Museum in Dortmund, Germany.
Lara Pan, Curator; Berengere de Thonel d’Orgeix; Artistic Direction Translation : Alexandre Bigaignon;
(1) Arnold Van Gennep, Rites de Passage, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960): 3.
Gleichapel would like to mention here that we were sad to hear of Hans Breder’s passing on June 18, 2017 at the age of 82. We extend our condolences to his surviving family. Hans Breder was born October 20, 1935, Herford, Germany and died June 18, 2017, Iowa City, Iowa.