Via Lewandowsky: Paeninsular

by Durs Grünbein, Joachim Jager, Christoph Tannert

Berlin-based artist Via Lewandowsky, born in 1963, came to international attention at Documenta IX, and more recently with a piece commissioned by the German Ministry of Defense, an aerial view of Berlin showing the devastation of World War II. Paeninsular presents his most recent works, devoted to overturning ordinary logic with visual and conceptual play. Lewandowsky's complicated installations are often determined, down to the smallest detail, by irony and deception, examining the idiosyncrasies of the German language and its visual interpretations. For example, the German word "schrankwand" (wall unit) becomes an object in which a wall and a cupboard penetrate one another such that a door in the wall stands half-open in the cupboard. His title, Paeninsular, which uses geography figuratively, suggests a world in which one is always slightly disoriented and can never be sure how to find (literally speaking) the mainland or (conceptually speaking) the final meaning of this teasing work.

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Durs Grünbein is a German poet, essayist and translator living in Berlin since 1985.

Grünbein is hailed as the most significant and successful poet to emerge from the former East Germany, and his work has been awarded many major German literary prizes, including the highest, the Georg-Büchner-Preis, which he won in 1995. That same year, he also won the Peter Huchel Prize for Poetry.

In 2005, he held the position of Max Kade Distinguished Visiting Professor at Dartmouth College.

In 2006, Grünbein was elected by the academy of fine arts at Düsseldorf to the first chair of poetry (poetics and artistic aesthetics) at any German university or academy. Grünbein is a regular contributor to Frau und Hund - Zeitschrift für kursives Denken, edited by the academy's rector, the painter Markus Lüpertz.

Grünbein has also published several essay collections and new translations of plays from antiquity, among them Aeschylus' The Persians, and Seneca's Thyestes. His work, which also includes contributions to catalogues and a libretto for opera, has been translated into many languages.