#142: Asta Gröting

Asta Gröting works in various media such as video, sculpture and performance. Her works focus on social interaction, they interweave psychological and social references to create personal and collective statements. For Videoart at Midnight, she will be showing a cross-section of her video work since 1993, with a focus on relationships between people and animals and their nature. 

“In all her works, Gröting draws us into her way of seeing. Her films and sculptures are interested in looking intently with a microscopic focus at surfaces, appearances and effects in order to ascertain what lies beneath them. Each piece seems to be seeded in the question, what is the nature of x? With a forensic attention to detail, she searches for aspects not visible to the naked eye, asking what can surfaces tell us that we don’t know that we know? How can we look again at what is right before us?”
– Kirsty Bell

Asta Gröting will show:

Touch, 2017, 14:35 min
The hands of the artist are modelling a portrait made out of clay. In the course of the work a face emerges, and this develops into the first facial expression, which is then followed by different expressions. The oldest of humankind’s tools, the hands, form human emotions into a psychology without words.

Primate and Human (Excerpt), 2023, 3:34 min
A portrait of two orangutans overlays the face of a toddler. What happens when primates and humans make eye contact and what do we see in the ape’s eyes?

Wolf and Dog, 2021, 9:58 min, with a musical performance by Juliana Perdigão
The film shows the encounter between a dog and a wolf. It shows the approach and a dramatic scene between the two animals captured with an ultra high-speed camera.

Cherry Blossom – Dawn and Dusk, 2023, 6:18 min, with music by Robert Henke
An image of a cherry tree in springtime blossom is captured at one frame per second in the twilight hours of dawn and dusk. The tree’s branches, heavy with flowers, tremble in a blooming season shown in time-lapse.

Laika Running, 2021, 1:00 min
A speckled dog is running in the snow. Filmed at 1.000 frames per second, the dog’s galloping pace is played back in slow motion.

Ice (Gonzo), 1995, 5:27 min
The film is based on a one-hour revue at Frankfurt’s Eissporthalle (ice rink). Eight performances illustrated the inner and outer balance of five ice dancers, an ice hockey player with two sculptures – a nest and a cage –, a black bear, and a world champion in pirouettes. The performance emerged in cooperation with Frankfurt am Main’s Theater am Turm (TAT).

Blinded and the Best Light (Excerpt), 2020, 1:05 min
AG’s face is illuminated by different sources in various sequences. An abstract sound brings together psycho-acoustic and electromagnetic recordings of light and electricity.

3D Studio (Excerpt), 2023, 5:50 min
The video shows pans an dolly shots through AG’s empty studio. The recordings were made with a macro lens of a 3D printed miniature model. The actual, unlit studio can be seen in the background.

Touch / Molten Smile (Excerpt), 2018, 1:00 min
Working with a dense yet still fluid piece of glass in a glassblowing workshop, AG holds a smiling face that deforms itself in the process.

Things, 2018, 6:23 min
Seventeen items – including a model carriage, a ball, bread, a lemon, a bone, milk and one gladiola – slide through the air and then slowly float downwards. This process depicts the immense range of things that surround us in our daily lives; it is a homage to slowness, examining each object with protracted intensity.

Touch (Excerpt), 2015, 8:05 min
For this video installation, AG invited eleven people who played a role in her life. Each filmed person looks deep into AG’s eyes while she exploring the contours of their facial features with her hands. Through this act of touching, measuring and feeling, AG stages a form of portraiture that, on the one hand, is reminiscent of traditional sculptural movement sequences and, on the other hand, is reminiscent of medical massage techniques.

The Inner Voice / You’re Good, 16 Years, 1999 – 2015, 9:52 min, with Buddy Big Mountain
The Inner Voice / Praise and Blame, 1:19 min, with Jennifer Fields
The Inner Voice / You Are Bad, 2000, 2:60 min, with Ronn Lucas
The Inner Voice uses the medium of ventriloquism to examine the types of conversations that we find most uncomfortable, both with each other and ourselves. It is a series of films, performances and photographs, that AG wrote, produced, and created, starting in 1993. The early films were made at the Las Vegas Ventriloquist convention, with ventriloquists from all over the world performing dialogue in their native language using a puppet made by AG. From 2003, the dialogues were written by Tim Etchells and Deborah Levy. To date, 33 different versions of The Inner Voice have been created.
The Native American Performer and ventriloquist Buddy Big Mountain co-created almost all of his performances and videos, as well as two interviews, in which he shares his family history, and his creative and professional development as a ventriloquist.

Parking, 2001, 4:43 min
In this view of a street in Berlin from a bird’s eye perspective, we see several cars competing for a single parking space.

Faster with Eichhorn and König, 2004, 1:58 min
In two bunt out car wrecks, the artist Maria Eichhorn and the curator Kaspar König hold a race. In the background, we can see images of an illegal car race.

The Swimmer (Excerpt), 1997, 1:26 min, with Marleen Thamm

Asta Gröting (* 1961 in Herford, Germany) is professor at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste Braunschweig. Gröting had international solo exhibitions like at the Lindenau-Museum Altenburg, Centre Pasquart in Biel/Bienne, KINDL– Centre for Contemporary Art, Berlin;  ZKM Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologien, Karlsruhe; n.b.k., Berlin; Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz; Henry Moore Institute, Leeds; and MARTa Herford. She has participated in numerous large-scale international exhibitions, including at the Kunsthalle Bremen; Museum Frieder Burda, Baden- Baden; Fundación Juan March, Madrid; Musée des Beaux-Arts, Paris; James-Simon-Galerie; Staatliche Museen zu Berlin; Kunsthalle Bielefeld; 22nd São Paulo Biennial; the 8th and 14th Biennale of Sydney, and the 44th Venice Biennale.