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Simon Starling

Temporäre Kunsthalle Berlin, Berlin, Germany

Simon Starling, Under Lime (2009), exhibition view. Photograph: Jens Ziehe. Courtesy: neugerriemschneider, Berlin

It’s a disorientating scene. Perhaps it’s the lone cactus, standing ten-feet high, or the big chuntering motor. Maybe it’s the large leafless branch and the suspended chainsaw. Simon Starling is a master of the uncanny, creating works that are the end result of a journey from the familiar to the strange via the eccentric. The best-known example of this was his Turner Prize-winning Shedboatshed (2005), which, true to its name, started off in someone’s garden in Germany, was dismantled by Starling and turned into a boat that was then paddled down the Rhine, only to be reassembled as a shed at the Kunstmuseum Basel.

The adventures that Starling embarks upon and the bizarre transformations he orchestrates set out to reverse the classic artistic endeavour whereby all effort is concealed behind the integrity of the work. For Starling the effort is the art. His work externalizes the mental and physical process involved in creation and involves the spectator in a series of rhetorical questions about art and its relation to energy and waste. It comes as no surprise, then, to learn that the cactus on display at Berlin’s Temporäre Kunsthalle – one half of the installation Kakteenhaus (2002) – was in fact found by Starling in the Andalucian desert and transported back to Germany in a red Volvo. This car is now parked in front of the gallery space, and its motor, having been removed and set up inside, is now producing sufficient heat for a cactus-friendly climate.

Kakteenhaus (2002), detail

Elsewhere, Plant Room (2008) also employs the use and conversion of energy in an interesting way. Photography – the ultimate time-traveller – is often an inspiration for Starling’s works, and central to this piece is a selection of eight original photos by Karl Blossfeldt (1865-1932), each one a close-up of a flower or leaf. Blossfeldt is known for his detailed, formalist depictions of plants, for transforming the plant from something wild and natural to something architectural, almost artificial. Starling is evidently drawn to this artist, who, a century before him, was concerned with analyzing the point at which the inanimate and the living converge. In Plant Room Starling honours this shared fascination: the photographs are housed in an archaic clay brick house, of which the integrated humidity-monitoring system draws the water it needs from the nearby river Spree, and a fuel cell then works in harmony with the clay to maintain the optimal climate for conserving the vintage prints.

Plant Room (2008)

There is something ironic about viewing Starling’s work in the palimpsestic Temporäre Kunsthalle. This impressive space is located on the site of the recently demolished Palast der Republik, which before that was the home of a baroque castle. Two years from now it too will be pulled down to give way to a new construction. Amidst this grandeur, Under Lime (2009), commissioned specifically for this exhibition, seems at first sight rather uninspiring and small – ephemeral even. A branch protruding from the ceiling is easy to miss and the chainsaw suspended next to it looks like something the builders left behind. The narrative behind this work is that the chainsaw was used to remove the branch from a tree on the famous Berlin boulevard Unter den Linden, which is home to Humboldt University but was of course also the site of the infamous Nazi book burnings. Perhaps this is another of Starling’s comments upon the vulnerability of nature in the face of human intervention; or perhaps it was merely the closest tree to hand. Either way, it makes the moving point that, in Berlin’s painful history, destruction and waste are never far away.

Starling has some good stories to tell, and his strange couplings – characteristically drawn from both the man-made and natural world – leave one curious, even baffled, and wanting to know more. He makes poignant use always of his environments and is sensitive to atmospheres. In an age where the physical ‘art work’ is still so emphasized, it is intriguing to see in him a performer, a maker, someone who deals very much with the process of producing art. Indeed, Starling would no doubt be amused to learn that the 35,000 tonnes of steel that once held the Palast der Republik together are currently being shipped to the United Arab Emirates, soon to be resurrected once again as the Burj Dubai, which will be the tallest man-made structure of all time.