![](https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Exhibitions/Gallery-Exhibitions/Bermondsey/2018/Anselm-Kiefer/Anselm-Kiefer-Anselm-Kiefer-White-Cube-Bermondsey-28-September-11-November-2018-medium-res-7.jpg?w=960&h=720&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1700057929&s=75cfaba721cb629df8fb0838fd91e0f8 960w, https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Exhibitions/Gallery-Exhibitions/Bermondsey/2018/Anselm-Kiefer/Anselm-Kiefer-Anselm-Kiefer-White-Cube-Bermondsey-28-September-11-November-2018-medium-res-7.jpg?w=1280&h=960&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1700057929&s=a663a62a642536d5a2726a82eebd80a8 1280w, https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Exhibitions/Gallery-Exhibitions/Bermondsey/2018/Anselm-Kiefer/Anselm-Kiefer-Anselm-Kiefer-White-Cube-Bermondsey-28-September-11-November-2018-medium-res-7.jpg?w=1600&h=1200&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1700057929&s=29fc85d21c8ae53a343de07b0e39e3c3 1600w, https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Exhibitions/Gallery-Exhibitions/Bermondsey/2018/Anselm-Kiefer/Anselm-Kiefer-Anselm-Kiefer-White-Cube-Bermondsey-28-September-11-November-2018-medium-res-7.jpg?w=2360&h=1770&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1700057929&s=cb44eae8d5235e8126a7bdcb74d7250f 2360w)
Anselm Kiefer
Anselm Kiefer
28 September – 11 November 2018
Dates
28 September – 11 November 2018
One day, I gathered up my parachute and said: ‘Between two swallows and a star.’ Here death is coming closer like the earth to a falling balloon. [...] And now my parachute drops from dream to dream through the spaces of death.
Titled For Vicente Huidobro: Life is a parachute voyage and not what you’d like to think it is (2018), this large-scale vitrine directly responds to the spatial proportions of the 9 x 9 x 9 gallery.
For Vicente Huidobro […] is informed by Kiefer’s career-long focus on themes of mortality, spirituality, history and the metaphorical power inherent within objects and materials. Referencing lines of poetry from Altazor (1931), the master work of avant-garde Chilean poet Vicente Huidobro, it exemplifies the artist’s signature poetic and potent transformation of matter, played out on a monumental scale.
The vitrine measures more than 6 metres tall, reaching out into the entire height and width of the gallery space. Contained within it is an old rusted bicycle, discarded and lying on its side on a bed of dry, cracked and bleached earth. Tethered to the bicycle are a number of thin strings, connecting it to a white silk parachute above, listlessly draped over a wire mesh armature. Organic and amorphous but nonetheless conveying a kind of animism, the parachute appears as if in perpetual upwards motion, although trapped by the vitrine’s glass ceiling. Suggestive of an ‘absent’ body the sculpture addresses themes of life and death, metaphorically gesturing towards heaven and hell, and the duality of beauty and melancholy that resides within a continuous cycle of human toil and endeavour
Anselm Kiefer was born in Donaueschingen, Germany in 1945 and has lived and worked in France since 1993. He has exhibited widely, including solo shows at The State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg (2017); Albertina Museum, Vienna (2016); Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (2015); Royal Academy of Arts, London (2014); Tel Aviv Museum of Art (2011); Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (2011); Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, Denmark (2010); Grand Palais, Paris (2010); Guggenheim Bilbao (2010); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2006); Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas (2005); The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (1998); Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin (1991); and The Museum of Modern Art, New York (1987). In 2007 Kiefer became the first artist since Georges Braque 50-years earlier to be commissioned to install a permanent work at the Louvre, Paris. In 2009 he created an opera, Am Anfang, to mark the 20th anniversary of the Opéra National de Paris.
![](https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Headers/Artist-Pages/Anselm-Kiefer-Superstrings-Runes-The-Norns-Gordian-Knot-2019-medium-res.jpg?w=720&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1682414906&s=e02adaa85b902d7edf0b867c9e7bf92f 720w, https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Headers/Artist-Pages/Anselm-Kiefer-Superstrings-Runes-The-Norns-Gordian-Knot-2019-medium-res.jpg?w=960&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1682414906&s=75dbc5711d6dfafae921e8ac7aba830a 960w, https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Headers/Artist-Pages/Anselm-Kiefer-Superstrings-Runes-The-Norns-Gordian-Knot-2019-medium-res.jpg?w=1280&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1682414906&s=d5053cdf8f2e0766db8823d08b967e14 1280w, https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Headers/Artist-Pages/Anselm-Kiefer-Superstrings-Runes-The-Norns-Gordian-Knot-2019-medium-res.jpg?w=1600&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1682414906&s=bfd1aee5191629cd4b21618b170ec672 1600w, https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Headers/Artist-Pages/Anselm-Kiefer-Superstrings-Runes-The-Norns-Gordian-Knot-2019-medium-res.jpg?w=2360&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1682414906&s=6dec1e61fb66c0c26aa9ec6145ff6d92 2360w)
Anselm Kiefer
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