Karl Haendel

The American artist Karl Haendel’s (b. 1976) works were first shown at the Astrup Fearnley Museum during the group exhibition Uncertain States of America: American Art in the 3rd Millennium (2005). The exhibition showcased young contemporary artists from the USA.

Train #1 (2008)* seems at first glance to be an ordinary black & white photo of an old steam-powered locomotive, but as we move closer to it, pencil lines materialize before our eyes. Standing directly in front of the picture, we see a myriad of grey-scale nuances made with graphite. This drawing is based on an old black & white photo from the early 1950s that Haendel found in a library book. To create his version, he enlarged the photo and used an overhead projector to transfer the outlines to drawing paper. Then he drew the motif. The picture is meticulously drawn on two large pieces of paper joined in the middle. (The adjoining edges seem rough and overly noticeable, a peculiarity found in several of Haendel’s works.)

Haendel is interested in 'antiquated processes', actions previously performed by manual labour. Drawing as a technique and craft are here combined with the old locomotive to underscore just this idea. From the perspective of a smooth digital world, this work stands as an expression of something almost regressive. At the same time, it expresses a subtle criticism of modern society. There was a time when trains were seen as the transportation means of the future. That was of course before everyone bought cars and could afford airplane tickets. The old photo (made with an old camera) was found in the old way – by looking in a book. Haendel did not surf the Internet. It is also worth noting that this locomotive was powered by coal and transported coal or wood. These two natural resources are also the starting points for the artist’s chosen media, graphite on paper (graphite is the highest grade of coal and most paper is made from wood-pulp). This in turn can call attention to industries that exploit increasingly limited natural resources and ceaselessly search the world for new oil and gas deposits – in order to maintain our Western lifestyle.

Like many artists of his generation, Haendel uses appropriation. In this way he and his colleagues demonstrate their indebtedness to 1980s artists who introduced the idea of appropriation as a method. Without compunction, Haendel et alia use the steady stream of pictures pumped out by mass media, the world of advertising and the entertainment industry. While this poses a challenge to the modernistic view of the artist as someone who creates 'from scratch', the appropriationists do breath new meaning into the old pictures by using them as springboards for new works. But unlike Richard Prince, who re-uses famous advertisement photos, or Cindy Sherman, who stages 'film stills', Haendel does not appropriate from famous or easily accessible sources. The photos he uses often seem haphazardly selected or torn from a context. Nevertheless, with his method he imbues new content and meaning into the old pictures and can be said to be artistically related to Gerhard Richter, an artist he also claims is an inspiration.

AHL

* The work is no longer a part of the exhibition.