Volker März
When the Hunter Turns Into Prey
Artist
Volker März
(1957, Mannheim), German
Original Title
When the Hunter Turns Into Prey
Date2013
Mediumacrylic on canvas
Dimensions 190 × 440 cm
Classificationspaintings
Credit LineKunsthalle Praha
DescriptionMultidisciplinary artist Volker März produces his political installations and performances by combining different artistic forms, including sculpture, installation, performance, text, and film. He often utilizes provocation to awaken his viewer´s consciousness and prompt them to form their own opinions. März engages with politics, religious issues, and questions of fear, adaptation, freedom, and tolerance. He most often conveys narratives using small and medium-sized clay figures which he oven-bakes and subsequently hand paints. The figures are used to represent both ordinary people and important historical figures from the fields of philosophy, literature, art, and politics such as Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt, Friedrich Nietzsche, Pina Bausch, Joseph Beuys, and Nelson Mandela. However, he does not approach these influential thinkers with reverent respect—on the contrary, he takes them off their pedestals and subverts their representatively conceived biographies, a process aided by a non-politicized exploration of their childhoods. This investigative approach allows him to see the world from different perspectives and express a critical and ironic view of the contemporary era and its society. März also often analyzes German history and examines tabooed topics toward which the war-time generation usually remained silent. He was personally confronted with the residues of the Nazi past during his childhood when his family moved to Bavaria. His work also draws extensively on the work of philosopher and political scientist Hannah Arendt, who explores questions of power, totalitarianism, obedience, and submission, and who famously studied the figure of Adolf Eichmann.
This large-format canvas titled When the Hunter Becomes the Prey (2003) depicts a military unit marching through an open landscape. The viewer’s attention is drawn to the bottom right-hand section of the canvas, where the troops are getting ready to throw an enemy soldier into a well. The figurative piece is an expression of März’s antipathy to war and bloodthirst, which fundamentally contradict humanism and a belief in the value of every individual life. It can therefore be interpreted as a call for pacifism and conciliatory conflict resolution.
Volker März (*1957, Mannheim) currently lives and works in Berlin. From 1977 to 1983 he studied at the Hochschule der Künste Berlin (renamed to the Universität der Künste Berlin in 2001). März has featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions in countries such as Germany, Poland, Israel, Turkey, and the Netherlands, and has also authored ten publications. In 2013, he had a solo exhibition at the DOX Centre for Contemporary Art in Prague.
This large-format canvas titled When the Hunter Becomes the Prey (2003) depicts a military unit marching through an open landscape. The viewer’s attention is drawn to the bottom right-hand section of the canvas, where the troops are getting ready to throw an enemy soldier into a well. The figurative piece is an expression of März’s antipathy to war and bloodthirst, which fundamentally contradict humanism and a belief in the value of every individual life. It can therefore be interpreted as a call for pacifism and conciliatory conflict resolution.
Volker März (*1957, Mannheim) currently lives and works in Berlin. From 1977 to 1983 he studied at the Hochschule der Künste Berlin (renamed to the Universität der Künste Berlin in 2001). März has featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions in countries such as Germany, Poland, Israel, Turkey, and the Netherlands, and has also authored ten publications. In 2013, he had a solo exhibition at the DOX Centre for Contemporary Art in Prague.
Milan Knížák
1977-1981
