Dove Bradshaw, William Anastasi,
Margrete Sørensen and Torben Ebbesen
Group show
Stalke Galleri, Vesterbrogade 14A
7.3. to 4.4.1998
“One of the great impediments to an optimistic attitude towards humanity and its future is the persistent nature of the persecution of the Jews. Christianity’s greatest heresy is anti-Semitism.”
— William Anastasi, 1987
In 1981, Anastasi made a drawing of the word “Jew”; in 1985, he produced the first painting. Motivated by remarks by Freud — “Hatred for Judaism is at bottom hatred for Christianity” — and Voltaire — “…it is clear we all ought to become Jews, because Jesus Christ…was born a Jew, lived a Jew, died a Jew, and said expressly he was fulfilling the Jewish religion” — Anastasi wrote:
“Speaking in the broader cultural sense, we are all Jews. The view from this tangent offers the clearest explication for the historical persistence of anti-Semitism. Prejudice, the purest mirroring of self-loathing, can in this light be identified as both engine and fuel, and it tells why ‘Jew’ is our most charged word. Where one ear discerns the single syllable which can conjure forth the very source of our culture, another hears an accusation wider and deeper than any in language.”
In Thomas McEvilley’s catalogue essay, William Anastasi’s Painting of the Word ‘Jew’, he noted that almost all of Anastasi’s work related to structures of cognition. In this quarter, however, McEvilley identified virtually Anastasi’s only work “directed straight at society and history, pointing unambiguously at social problems and issues and social and political history.”
The exhibition consisted of etched panels of shatterproof glass, each bearing the words “I am a Jew” in fifteen languages.
Dove Bradshaw presented six cement paintings from 1998. Cement had not been ignored by sculptors, particularly since the 1960s, but it had rarely appeared in painting. A humble substance, yet one that epitomized strength, it created a displacement when used in painting.
2v0, 1971–1998was number one in an edition of ten commissioned by The Mattress Factory Museum, Pittsburgh. The original was designed in 1971. When vertical, the work functioned as a clock in sympathy with Jarry’s “Pataphysics,” telling a different time whenever consulted. When horizontal, it became a level without a benchmark. Bradshaw stated of the work: “I was interested in misidentifying time and space in a single instrument, at first not thinking of it as art but as a useless invention.”
Thomas McEvilley recounted a conversation with John Cage in which he said: “Dove’s work seems to act according to nature.” Cage responded: “Particularly when it doesn’t seem to be art.”
Installation by William Anastasi, Ich bin Jude (1998), consisting of 15 tempered glass panels engraved with the phrase “I am a Jew” in 15 languages, exhibited at Stalke Galleri.
From left: installation views of Margrete Sørensen’s geometric wall panels; a cement monochrome by Dove Bradshaw; and a sculptural work by Torben Ebbesen. All works were part of the 1998 exhibition at Stalke Galleri.
Review – Berlingske Tidende
Torben Weirup, March 20, 1998
In his review of the exhibition at Galleri Stalke, Torben Weirup describes the presentation as a restrained and precisely curated combination of four artists working with minimalist and reflective expressions. He characterizes the exhibition as “clarified and quietly speaking,” emphasizing its concentrated aesthetic approach.
Weirup highlights William Anastasi’s works as being directly oriented toward historical and ethical issues, pointing to the repeated statement “I am a Jew” as a central element of the exhibition’s thematic focus. Dove Bradshaw’s contribution is described as investigative and materially driven, with the works producing a “crisp, natural quality” through simple means.
Margrete Sørensen’s works are noted for their introspective character and for addressing the individual’s relationship to their surroundings through symbolic and reduced forms. Torben Ebbesen’s contribution is described as complex and composite, assembling fragments into a possible image of the world.
Overall, the review positions the exhibition as an example of a quiet yet content-rich practice, in which reflection, materiality, and existential questions emerge without reliance on spectacular effects.