Stefan Mandelbaum’s Footage of the Fall of Man

Editor’s observe: The next story references racial and sexual violence.

Stefan Mandelbaum’s artwork is stuffed with inherent contradictions and tragic historical past. The Belgian artist and poet’s large-scale work, presently on show on the Drawing Middle, inform the story of a person entangled together with his personal demons – inherited, but deeply private – and his battle to beat them And the hassle put in.

Born in Brussels in 1961 to 2 artists, Mandelbaum started portray on the age of seven. His household tree is a mosaic of perseverance: His father’s facet bore the burden of Holocaust survival inside the Jewish group, whereas his mom’s lineage could be traced to survivors of the Armenian genocide. Maybe due to the household trauma that endured all through his childhood, Mandelbaum clung to his grandfather and their shared Jewish identification, having a vested curiosity within the cultural moderately than the spiritual points of Jewish life. Though he was reportedly dyslexic, he taught himself fundamental Yiddish.

His Jewish heritage grew to become a guiding mild for his later creative apply, though the phrase “later” is relative: in 1986, on the age of 25, he tried to steal what turned out to be a pretend Modigli from an aged girl’s house. Yanni was murdered after his work. However this exhibition doesn’t take the simple street out of telling this salacious historical past. As an alternative, it focuses on a ten-year interval throughout which he produced lots of of drawings. Created in ball pen, graphite and coloured pencil, these works showcase the artist’s exploration of the depths of human depravity, interweaving violence with sexuality and lawlessness.

Mandelbaum’s haunting portraits of members of the Nazi Occasion cling on the central wall of the gallery. Right here, portraits of Ernst Röhm, an early ally of Adolf Hitler and chief of Nazi paramilitary teams, and Joseph Goebbels, Nazi propaganda minister, sit facet by facet. They arrive throughout as half satan, half human. A bust of Roehm sits atop a fireplace pit crammed with purple, blue and black graffiti and markings, and his identify is etched into the paper. Goebbels’ type is softer: just a few traces counsel a seated physique, focusing all consideration on the detailed face. Within the profile sketch, we see a person with heavy shadows, eyes closed, hairline receding, and mouth extensive open.

The works are juxtaposed with a 1982 portray by Mandelbaum’s father, Arié Mandelbaum. Mandelbaum painted a portrait of his father in graphite, with collage and textual parts scattered all through the work. Within the center is a placing Yiddish phrase that interprets to “kiss my ass.” Within the textual content was a caricature of a Jew with an enormous nostril and a wolf-like smile, subsequent to a pornographic image of a Nazi soldier.

Anybody who speaks Hebrew, Yiddish, German, or French can simply spend hours attempting to decipher the complicated language littering the perimeters of this and lots of different works within the exhibition, comparable to Mandelbaum Appreciation portraits of painters and poets, in addition to portraits of the Brussels underworld. Pictures of intercourse employees, thugs and pimps. These embody feedback comparable to “kosher” in Hebrew, “fucking Jew” in German, and “bitch” and “bastard Jew” in French. The language utilized by the artist conveys an emotional mixture of anger, despair, revenge and humor, all rolled into one.

Mandelbaum confronts the worst elements of humanity in his artwork and grapples together with his internal struggles within the course of. In a diary summarizing his apply, he wrote: “On my pages the twentieth century spits out its murders. I’m disgusted by what I’ve finished, however on the similar time revered.”

Stefan Mandelbaum The exhibition continues by means of February 18 on the Drawing Middle (35 Worcester Avenue, SoHo, Manhattan). The exhibition is organized by Laura Hoptman, government director of the Drawing Middle, in collaboration with Susanne Pfeffer, director of the Museum of Fashionable Artwork in Frankfurt.