Meditation - Anselm Kiefer's 'Palm Sunday'

Meditation on Anselm Kiefer’s Palm Sunday - Thursday 28th May 2009, Tate Modern

Dead diagonal
transecting space
dusty, dirty palm
bleached of life
red clay
ball of roots
leaves droop
and trail
once fertile
now fragile
creviced trunk
bridges root ball
and limp
foliage bush

two walls -
39 framed panels
stacked three panels high –
are backdrop
to the palm diagonal
desert landscapes
composed of leaves
and sand
hieratic bleached leaves
tangled twigs
discarded clothing
dead matter
constructing created
mindscapes for the soul

Vast vistas -
cracked clay
dry surfaces -
death and decay
sterility and stasis
worlds shattered
and broken
apocalyptic
thirsty lands
praying for water

39
and the installation
forming 40 -
40 desert days
and nights
demonic temptations
forming
repentance sermons
Where are
our roots?
Have we lost
our roots?
Are we
torn up
by our roots?
Is our world
sterile, shallow,
cracked, breaking,
dry, dusty,
diseased, dirty,
dead?

Words written
in sand –
“vater”
“psalmsonntag”
“domenica
belle palme” –
words written
in sand –
pregnant pause
transient scribing
before
pointed challenge
and rocks
falling from hands
onto sand

An event
containing
death and life
turning on
signs in sand
water in desert
life in death
restoration in ruins
An installation
containing
creative dryness
constructive discards
where dead
things live as
objects of reflection
where discards
are reimagined
recombined
reworked
recreated
from detritus
and decay
dust
and destruction

Palm Sunday -
a festival
containing its
own apocalypse
and apotheosis
a welcome
that become
a waylaying
a celebration
that became
a condemnation
a crucifixion
that became
a resurrection

Palms torn
from a living tree
are thrown
in the dust
as welcome
to be trodden
underfoot
and discarded
bleached
by the noonday
sun
these
discarded palms
gathered up
centuries later
for artistic
recreation

Is this
object
installation
and moment
of reflection
a pregnant
pause
a creative
sign in sand
a recreative
refashioning
reforming
from the
dry
discarded
and detritic
the sterile
stagnant
and static?

The Tate describe the Artist Rooms initiative as follows:

"ARTIST ROOMS is a collection of international contemporary art which has been created through one of the largest and most imaginative gifts of art ever made to museums in Britain. The gift was made by Anthony d'Offay in 2008, with the assistance of the National Heritage Memorial Fund, The Art Fund and the Scottish and British Governments. ARTIST ROOMS is jointly owned and managed by National Galleries of Scotland and Tate on behalf of the nation. The guiding principle of ARTIST ROOMS is the concept of individual rooms devoted to particular artists. Many of the rooms were conceived as specific installations by the artists themselves and have been assembled so that the work of important contemporary artists can be seen and appreciated in depth."

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Mark Heard - Rise From The Ruins.