Documenta (13) : No pain no art

Every 4 years (Or 5? still not sure about it), in a small town called Kassel in Germany, an olympic event of art is launched to draw art-lovers from around the world.  My colleague Peng told me that it shouldn't be missed when I am here is Germany. So, I went there and check it out.

I'm not big on modern art, so I had prepared myself to be confused and shocked. But, it turned out that I loved some of the ideas and found most of the art pieces humane, touching, and mystically sad. It seems that experiencing pain, lost, violence, death, ignorance, war...all the negative strong feelings are the bases for art. To deal with those traumatic emotions and make sense of them brings those artists, I think, a desire to embody it in art as a testimony of being alive or worthy of living.

 I'd like to share some of the pieces that I like here.

The museum to enter the Documenta 

Outside, the Occupying xx Group is camping and quietly protesting

Lost books burned by human ignorance are remembered in these stone books

The books saved.

one-man band. He played, sing, and tell stories. 

A shelf of wooden books

When you open the books, they nestle plants and nuts to remind you the relationship with nature.

Does it look like our puppets in Taiwan?

But the characters and personalities are stronger.

I love this camel. Do we have animals in our puppets?

Pictures on sticks

All the images cut out from Time magazines published from 1930-60?

walking through this, recognizing the images, it's like a brain is cut open to show what has been stored. Amazing how much we remember!

The artist from China remade those well-known images. They hang on the walls like posters, but to change the idea of exhibition, the artist takes one poster down and replaces it with a colored board. Can you imagine maybe before the end of the exhibition, all the posters will be gone and only the colored boards left. Interesting isn't it?

A film where you see a head, fragmented parts of the head, and each frame is a highway where cars rush through. Fascinating! I can see my head like that when I'm thinking.

I took this when I was sitting in the woods (an installation), where the music coming from above, 2 characters were talking, playing, joking maybe, then, there was wars, the noises of cars, screams, ...

a film, a woman sits in front of the donkey. they sit there...sit...sit... sit...and I left.

I wish I could have more time to comprehend more the ideas but by the end of our 2 days visit, I hit the saturation point that I couldn't think or appreciate any more. That's why the Documenta will be going on for 3 months. It doesn't meant to be comprehended in 2 days. But, I got to taste a little bit. And for art, we experience it every day in our mundane life if we have an artistic mind.  but it's still wonderful to see these artistic minds gather together here in Documenta.