Artist: Emanuel Wadé
Exhibition title: Alles Leben einschließlich Flugzeuge [All Life including Airplanes]
Venue: Galerie Christine Mayer, Munich, Germany
Date: February 22 – May 15, 2020
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Galerie Christine Mayer, Munich
Alles Leben einschließlich Flugzeuge
[All Life including Airplanes]
A work of art that is created without ifs and buts is often perceived as passé and yet at the same time expected. In 1846, Charles Baudelaire asked: “What is Romanticism?” To this question he found the following answer: “To say the word Romanticism is to say modern art – that is, intimacy, spirituality, colour, aspiration towards the infinite, expressed by every means available to the arts.”
Emanuel Wadé seems to fulfil this prophecy of modernity in that he sets out from within himself and continually creates something colourful and sophisticated. Even in repetition, his imagination is never caught in the tracks of construction, and surprise never disappears into spectacle. Repetition does not have the effect of emptying, but of deepening; ideas do not necessarily have to be always new, but instead are allowed to simply exist. In Emanuel Wadé’s work, romanticism and modernism, spirituality and colour, intimacy and art – which Baudelaire speaks of – do not appear as opposites, but as natural polarities. In his reliefs, colours take on a different kind of plasticity. The spheres made of wire in his sculptures seem no stranger than planet Earth which we can only attempt to imagine in its entirety. The title “All Life including Airplanes” was conceived three days ago in a café: it refers to the fact that Emanuel Wadé includes even such objects as airplanes into a single entity which in turn provides us with a place of refuge and encounter, instead of a mere vision.
In a panel that Emanuel Wadé once devised for himself, he juxtaposes ship and pattern, figure and landscape. Ship and figure are one thing, while pattern and landscape represent many things. Giorgio Agamben noted that antiquity was not concerned with subject and object, but rather with singularity and plurality. Of course, Emanuel Wadé does not reiterate the ancient world as we know it. Nor does he reveal an unfamiliar antiquity, which, according to his colours, would be located in North Africa. What he does instead is to offer us a sense of meaning and connectivity which remains hidden only because we constantly live within it.
Berthold Reiß translated by Jennifer Leetsch
Emanuel Wadé, Alles Leben einschließlich Flugzeuge [All Life including Airplanes], 2020, exhibition view, Galerie Christine Mayer, Munich
Emanuel Wadé, Untitled, 2016, acrylic, collage, plaster on jute, 78 x 110 x 8 cm
Emanuel Wadé, Untitled, 2016, acrylic, plaster on jute, 78,5 x 111 x 8 cm
Emanuel Wadé, Untitled, 2015, acrylic, plaster on jute, 68,5 x 53 x 8 cm
Emanuel Wadé, Untitled, 2015, acrylic, plaster on jute, 68,5 x 53 x 8 cm
Emanuel Wadé, Alles Leben einschließlich Flugzeuge [All Life including Airplanes], 2020, exhibition view, Galerie Christine Mayer, Munich
Emanuel Wadé, Untitled, 2014, aluminiumfoil, wire, acrylic, 39 x 38 x 26 cm
Emanuel Wadé, Untitled, 2017, acrylic on paper, plaster, wire, 59 x 42 x 11 cm
Emanuel Wadé, Alles Leben einschließlich Flugzeuge [All Life including Airplanes], 2020, exhibition view, Galerie Christine Mayer, Munich
Emanuel Wadé, Untitled, 2018, acrylic on paper on wood, 72,5 x 51 x 6,5 cm
Emanuel Wadé, Untitled, 2014, plaster, acrylic, wire, 42 x 35 x 25 cm
Emanuel Wadé, Untitled, 2016, acrylic, plaster on jute, 78 x 110 x 8 cm
Emanuel Wadé, Untitled, 2019, acrylic, wire, stones, wood, print on chipboard, 58 x 108 x 10 cm
Emanuel Wadé, Alles Leben einschließlich Flugzeuge [All Life including Airplanes], 2020, exhibition view, Galerie Christine Mayer, Munich
Emanuel Wadé, Untitled, 2017, acrylic, plaster, wire, steel, 67 x 33 x 33 cm
Emanuel Wadé, Untitled, 2016, acrylic on newspaper, 46 x 31 cm
Emanuel Wadé, Alles Leben einschließlich Flugzeuge [All Life including Airplanes], 2020, exhibition view, Galerie Christine Mayer, Munich
Emanuel Wadé, Untitled, 2017, acrylic on newspaper, 53,5 x 54,5 cm
Emanuel Wadé, Untitled, 2015, acrylic, plaster, rope on jute, 68 x 53 x 5,5 cm
Emanuel Wadé, Alles Leben einschließlich Flugzeuge [All Life including Airplanes], 2020, exhibition view, Galerie Christine Mayer, Munich
Emanuel Wadé, Untitled, 2019, oil, collage on canvas, 58 x 64 cm
Emanuel Wadé, Untitled, 2019, oil on canvas, 58 x 64 cm
Emanuel Wadé, Alles Leben einschließlich Flugzeuge [All Life including Airplanes], 2020, exhibition view, Galerie Christine Mayer, Munich
Emanuel Wadé, Untitled, 2019, oil on canvas, 175 x 85,5 cm
Emanuel Wadé, Untitled, 2018, acrylic, plaster, styrofoam, jute, 34 x 20 x 20 cm
