Mυθοποίηση - Mythopoesis
Tempel auf Zeit

I

The name of this place is Thesaurós and, along with all its forthcoming festivities and exhibitions, it is dedicated to poetry and memory. The works, personages and cosmos of the group of artists Thesaurós, eponymous with this physical location, together with the art historian JMH Schindele’s narrative interest, form its origin.

The first exhibition, Tempel auf Zeit [Temporary Temple], takes the Greek concept of Mυθοποίηση – Mythopoesis – as its conceptual focal point. This term describes the free narrating and creation of myths as an artistic form, world view and ethical force.

Myth, considered to be a mirror of human existence, a form of remembering, a particularly thick, compact part of the canon, a task and an artistic game. No mysticism, but a vibrant and highly attractive form of human ‘being in the world’. Inspiration and guideline of human freedom and healing.

II

The search for merging horizons

Tempel auf Zeit (temporary temple / temple for a time) is the first of a series of around ten art exhibitions, complemented by essays, poetry and comments.

This temple is concerned with the interplay of myth and poetry. As a life-shaping force and ground plan of human existence, this interplay is at the centre of an organic programme of conversations and birthday celebrations illustrated by ten works of art.

These originate from:

El Arbi Bouqdib ARCHIVE, arranged by Elshan Ghasimi, Michal Martychowiec and JMH Schindele.

GABRIEL, in collaboration with Stefan Hähnel, Laura Fociños Mantecón and JMH Schindele.

Elshan Ghasimi with Friedrich Andreoni.

Hilarion Manero.

Michal Martychowiec.

III

The artistic works, closely interwoven and circling each other, are fragments or parts of present mythologies. Nutshells of tradition. Mutually illuminating and obscuring, they are expression and language of their creators’ cosmos, as well as continuations of the canon’s eternal dialogue.

Sated in history and tales, all of them parts of the endless theme of memory (Gadamer). Hilarion Maneros‘ Odyssos, surging with shiny vibrancy, is like this, just as the map of Europe and the Fertile Crescent. On this we see the trail, slowly becoming visible, of the work and endeavour by the wandering hermit Edwin William Moes and his figure GABRIEL.

In a display case, an object from the estate of the Moroccan-Arabian mathematician, programmer and mystic El Arbi Bouqdib († 2016). Rosicrucian Ephemeris 1900-2000, a book presenting the star constellations of the past century, open at the presumed month of Bouqdib’s birth: April 1947.

The composer and tar virtuoso Elshan Ghasimi arranged this musically in 2018. But what is it, to which sphere does it belong? A cenotaph? A portrait? An archived document? A souvenir, a relict, a relic or even a readymade? What is certain is that we are faced with an entity of undetermined status, which has still to be questioned.

We read Martychowiec‘s triumphant all is history, see the artist’s hand stretch out towards us out of nowhere and hear him speak with Hölderlin: What remains the poets provide. On the floor an eleventh pair of shoes and the tracks of the probably first concert for subwoofer and tar.