Günther Uecker. The Human Abused: 14 Pacified Implements

“My theme is life and death,” says Günther Uecker, born in 1930 in Wendorf / Mecklenburg, about his art. The work “The Human Abuse: 14 befriedete Gerätschaften”, created for the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen from autumn 1992 to spring 1993, also lives from this tension. Here, too, the background is the theme that Günther Uecker takes up again and again: the “violation of man by man”. The theme became sadly topical in 1992 when right-wing extremist perpetrators of violence carried out a series of arson attacks against foreigners living in Germany.
The exhibition is a portrait of an artist, but not in the conventional sense. Rather, Uecker reacts in his typical formal language - with wooden slats, linen cloths, nails, stones, ashes, sand, sheets of writing, etc. - to the “violation of man by man”, or more precisely to the use of violence against foreigners in Germany. Based on the stations of the Christian Way of the Cross, Uecker has developed fourteen sculptural works with titles such as “Obstacle Way”, “White Tears”, “Fireplace”, “Scourge Mill”. In these memorials, he gives expression to his vision of life and suffering and attempts to reveal the basic forces of humanity in sensitive signs: Aggression, injuries, destruction, which he counters with reconciling gestures.
Günther Uecker: “So this is my protest, my statement, an expression of my agitation, a portrait of an artist in Germany, so to speak”.