The Elusive Conceptual Artist Lutz Bacher’s Posthumous Show in London Hones In on Princess Diana

On View

The artist’s audiovisual and installation works surprise and disorientate the viewer.

• Jo Lawson-Tancred
• 
  3 hours ago
  

The mysterious conceptualist Lutz Bacher is having her first posthumous institutional show at Raven Row in London. The artist herself initiated the concept for the exhibition with curator Anthony Huberman as a mixed presentation of audiovisual pieces which featuring old VHS footage from Princess Diana’s funeral and the voices and imagery of legendary figures from pop culture, including Leonard Cohen—but also Darth Vader. Eerie installations, including a pit of sand, fill the gallery rooms. After Bacher’s passing in 2019, the non-profit exhibition center Raven Row worked with the artist’s estate and Galerie Buchholz to deliver the exhibition.

A California native, Bacher lived in the Bay Area and later New York. She was known to be highly secretive and never publicly revealed basic biographical information, like her birth name or age (although it is known that she was born in 1943). Nonetheless, she received widespread institutional recognition with solo shows at MoMA PS1 in 2009, the ICA in London in 2013, and the Secession in Vienna in 2016.

At Raven Row, Bacher’s blend of found material, digital ephemera, and appropriated sounds and images is quintessential Bacher. In one gallery, panes of glass shimmer with projected images of the Empire State Building lit up with bright colors at night. In the lobby, the visitor is affronted by loud traffic noises, whereas upstairs, bible passages are blared out of a huge speaker while tinny radios play run-of-the-mill pop hits over each other. These strange works, that are tricky to categorize or contextualize, manage to disorientate the viewer in much the same way as our information-oversaturated world often succeeds in doing.

“Lutz Bacher: AYE!” runs through December 17. Check out more installation views of the exhibition below.

 

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