© ANSELM KIEFER ; Palmsonntag, 2007"I don't consider myself a Platonist but I think that the spirit is contained in the material and it is the artist's mission to extract it."
--Anselm Kiefer
The huge installation Palmsonntag (Palm Sunday), refers to the Christian holy day and suggests the balance between death and resurrection, decay and recreation so characteristic of Kiefer’s work. He brings the outside in with his materials of mud, sunflowers, roses and other organic materials. One has the sense of a Jackson Pollock painting with the energy that is conveyed in its creation.
From the Art Gallery of Ontario:
"Anselm Kiefer ranks among the most important artists to emerge from post-war Europe. Palmsonntag (Palm Sunday) is a monumental installation consisting of a 30-foot-long palm tree cast in fiberglass and resin, its roots clotted with mud, surrounded by a cycle of 44 large paintings encased in glass and framed in lead. Overwhelming in scale and sweeping in content, Palmsonntag conveys the operatic scope of Kiefer’s creative enterprise that crosses through spiritual, religious and mythical cultural territory."
"I would never say I'm a pessimist or optimist, I think I would say I am desperate because I don't know why I'm here,we don't know, we can't know. The more you know, the less you know....each discovery brings more questions." -- Ansem Kiefer
It is no wonder that I love his work so much....