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1999 » Germany » Thematic Section - Homage to Scenography
| Curator: | Kurt Gerling |
Germany
ACHIM FREYER: The Thematic exhibition documents the theatrical work of painter, director and stage designer Achim Freyer. For each of his productions he has developed an originál and distinctive theatrical world, be it for a classical drama or an opera, a new work by an author such Bernhard, Handke or Kroetz or by one of a diverse list of contemporary composers. (Glass, Kagel, Cage, Schnebel, Curran, Lachenmann). In the seventies Freyer became one of the major protagonists of the new "visual theater". In his work of period, one discovers a combination of directorial statement with a visually argumentative poetry of images. In his stage designs for the productions The Brigands (1975) and Faust I + II (1977) with director Claus Peymann in Stuttgart or for Pelléas et Melisande (1975), Wozzeck (1975) and Moses und Aron (1987) with Hans Neugebauer in Cologne, the set is the narrator of the dramatic action, The function of these designs was not solely interpretative, but rather they served to create a kind of vessel, in which the textual content of the work is made visible. For Achim Freyer a stage design is a visual "parallel composition" for a musical or literary text, "which also could be characterized itself as a new work. An important basis for his directorial work, which began in the eighties, was the systematic investigation of the basic elements of theatre and the visual arts and the discovery and development of a system of "rules of play". Freyer founded an ensemble made up of artists with a background in various performing disciplines, with whom he has realized a unique theater, through the combination of music, dance, spoken language and acrobatics. For his production of Einstein on the Beach (Philip Glass, Stuttgart, 1988), parallel to a study of the possibilities of physical deconstruction, he created a theatrical world, which itself was the subject of a dissection into the elements of language, sound, color, point, line, surface, figuře, space, movement and time. He thereby uncovered a theatrical cosmos for each of these specifie elements. At the samé time, he found a theatrical expression for his perception of the world around him, a no longer tangible reality. In terms of thematic content, Achim Freyer deals in his work with "order and disturbance" and "surface and space" and performed themes such as "power and failure", "the power of the statě and resistance" and "love" in its various recurrent forms. A trilogy at the Burgtheater in Vienna was devoted to the subject "Man and God" (Oviďs Metamorphosis, 1987, Wozzeck, 1989, Phaeton, 1991). During the nineties his productions háve increasingly demonstrated his characteristic approach to role interpretation, in which the theatrical space is defined through work on gestures, movements and relationships between the characters. The "Homage" consists sketches, designs and photographs - a visual documentation of three decades of Achim Freyer's work in the theatre.
