Joseph Beuys
(c)SABAM België, 2017 - Courtesy Galerie Thaddeus Ropac, Paris - London - Salzburg, photo: M HKA, 2017
The oldest component of this installation is the central sculpture Hirsch (Stag), from 1958, consists of an old ironing board, that belonged to Beuys' mother, resting on ebony. The thirty-eight Urtiere (Primitive Creatures) have a more formless, primordial appearance, but incorporate tools – the first signs of civilisation. Ziege (Goat) is made of a cart and a pickaxe, and is related to the mining of the Earth and to technology.
The last element, Boothia Felix is a cross-section of the Earth in which roots and pieces of pottery can be seen, mounted on a sculptor’s modelling tripod. The compass on top and the title – the name of a peninsula in the North American arctic– situates the scene near the home of Inuit communities. The elements that make up Hirschdenkmäler were first brought together as an installation during the exhibition Zeitgeist in 1982 in Berlin. The way it is arranged, emphases the processual, the unfinished.