Portrait series VIII
Morgue
Portrait of Franz van der Grinten
A Portrait of Franz van der Grinten, 2001
Excerpt from the opening speech
for the exhibition "Indomitable" by Dr. Peter Brinkemper
»Pathology is the space of the clinical gaze: the body becomes a decrepit corpus, struck down by death, a mechanical body world whose organs, limbs and tissues can be dissected for any purpose. Death is the metaphysical event, the incision that enables the dissection of the living and provides classical Western science with the platform for analytical research. Life was learnt from the dead, that was the purpose of classical anatomy.
30x24cm and 100x70cm, unique, sig., st., 2001
Bernd Arnold attempted to reverse this perspective in the context of the exhibition: In large-format close-ups, in which quasi-painterly as a naked Adam, as a living corpus in the painful devotion to his own life and suffering, impressively embodied in the Paradise Lost of his own existence. In this way, Bernd Arnold succeeds in spiritualising the concept of anatomy, turning the textbook of the body into a profane and serial altarpiece of the vulnerable human psyche, which contains the entire spectrum of erotic devotion in the sculptural gesture.«
