Siegfrieg Herz / Dasein II.

Dasein. A present moment of being fully aware of one’s existence, a borderline situation in which we no longer see the past and the future, but instead experience, with full intensity, only the course of events at whose center we currently find ourselves. Dasein is also the title of a series of drawings by Siegfried Herz that confronts us with moments of powerful here-being. Consisting of 124 individual pieces, it is one of Herz’s largest cycles of works. With these drawings, the artist revisits his characteristic technique in which he combines meticulous charcoal underdrawings with the “bronze” tones of coffee, washed ink, and almost invisible acrylic glazes. The resulting images often feel like old photographs, records of a fleeting moment gradually covered by the patina of the years. It is no accident that the images look like “snapshots” of frozen moments – the concept of a brief, yet intense and extreme experience forms the leitmotif of the entire cycle. Herz skillfully balances between a realistic representation that makes the scene feel real and a distinctive visual reduction that suppresses superfluous and distracting details in order to create an individual experience of a universal message of almost mythological import. The drawings depict scenes of a powerful expressiveness, and yet they seem to be hidden behind a layer of melancholy, one that nevertheless does not reduce this expressiveness but almost painfully amplifies it. The works’ message of extreme situations in life burns through our own memories and experiences, resonating with semi-forgotten, subconscious analogies that lie hidden deep in humankind’s collective consciousness. Anger, anxiety, frustration, resignation, and alienation, but also love, tenderness, friendship, and mutuality – all these things are reflected in the faces and gestures of Herz’s figures (who more often than not are women) as they go through initiatory experiences. The catalyst for such experiences may be a natural landscape, which can move us and console us just as well as it can crush us with its emptiness and vastness. Looming over the cycle at its conclusion is the monumental silhouette of an atomic mushroom cloud, that most eloquent and (in its fascinating majesty) most terrifying symbol of finality, encapsulated in one sudden moment. Within the context of today’s ever gloomier geopolitical situation, this image is once again frighteningly relevant and reminds us that da-sein also implies a finite existence (Patočka translated dasein as pobyt, which implies a temporary stay or visit), meaning that the presently experienced moment may also be our last.

The strength of Siegfried Herz’s art stems from the authenticity of its message. Herz has experienced many extreme situations in life that have shaped him without breaking him. For this reason, his images are not and can never be superficial: they are a painful reminder of the power of personal experience, emotional depth, love, hope, and unbending will.
Exhibition curator: Marekl Škubal