23. October – 1. March 2009
IWALEWA-Haus
Afrikazentrum der Universität Bayreuth
Münzgasse 9
95444 Bayreuth
The small plastic figures serve Bernhard Springer as starting point of a selfcritical dealing with the German Indian reception. He is in good company while doing this. Already in the year 1913, at the highest point of the German Wild-West-euphoria, Franz Kafka wrote his famous “Wish to Become and Indian”: “If one were a native Indian, ready right a way and on running horses, crooked in the air, always again trembled over the trembling ground…”
And another, Heiner Müller stated in one of his last conversations: “Being German means, to also be an Indian”. The Indian longing unites us Germans – beyond generations and ideological tranches.
Also the toy industry, mainly the manufacturer of Ludwigsburg Hausser (established since 1930 in Neustadt by Coburg), added already to the common Roman and night figures some of the Wild West and of Indians. In their countenance we see ourselves today. We find in the elastion figures of the 50s the heroic pathos of an Arno Breker – and in the 70s the Indians mutate into hippies with bellbottoms and fringed coats.
Bernhard Springer´s acryl paintings nobilize the small plastic Indians and with that also our own childhood memories linked together with them. Through the transfer into the medium of panel painting Bernhard Springer also thematizes the phenomena of projection: For one an Indian stands from sincerity and faithfulness, for other people he is example for a life in tune with nature. Each person creates the Indians that he or she needs! Bernhard Springer understands his art as “picture work”, as interview and transformation of discovered paintings. And with this he managed to create synthesis which are irritatingly and surprising synthesis between photo realism and concept art.
The exhibit unites acryl paintings with a large area and smaller ones, real plastic Indians of the most diverse generations, video works as well as some editions of the legendary punk-fanzine “plastic Indians” which came out in Munich between 1981 and 1999. Because of the exhibit in December 2008 Bernhard Springer made a special model, the ´Plastic Indian no. 20´.
Bernhard Springer, a graduated film philologue, lives since 1980 as freelance artist in the areas painting, movie, video, and sculpture in Munich. He is one of the first members of the artist group “Frisch Gestrichen” and of the producer gallery U5 (aka Workshop Galery 1980-90). Numerous prizes and awards, eg. Prize of the Euro council for the group project “Plastic Indian No. 15” on the 9th Festival International de Video et des Arts électroniques, Locarno 1987…
