Gerd Scholze

 

 

Cult


Gerd Scholze's artistic work is structured by references to ancient cults from the beginnings of the history of civilization.

We see reproductions of Stone Age Venuses, amongst others the Venus of Willendorf, an early goddess of fertility. The voluptuous idols float as projections of light like ghostly apparitions across three monitors, their pattern determining the direction in which to read the film loops we are seeing.

Different systems of symbols are shown to us on the first screen: Asian alphabets, the symbols of the Mayan language, symbols from the hippie era, the binary computer code, hieroglyphics, etc. Symbols in the language.

As if in a recurring dream, in the second film scene we move along the same street without knowing where it will lead us. Life in the search. The third loop combines nature and culture in a surreal way, the image of a computer-generated temple and an Arcadian landscape. Life in the encounter.

All three loops thematicize rituals of appropriating reality and orienting oneself towards it. The manners in which it is done, however, are quite different: