Everyone in London is talking about Anselm Kiefer's exhibition Finnegans Wake (7 June–20 August 2023).
Kiefer has made White Cube's Bermondsey gallery almost unrecognisable, transforming it into a labyrinth of shattered concrete mounds, glass vitrines, and hefty canvases.
A response to James Joyce's 1939 novel Finnegans Wake, which Kiefer read as a young man, the exhibition traces the parallels between the struggles and investigations of the artist and the author. A recurring theme is the cycle of death and regeneration.
Lines from Joyce's novel are scrawled across canvases and scratched into walls across the ambitious assemblage, forcing the viewer to share the burden of history that Kiefer's refuses to let himself forget.
Finnegans Wake (7 June–20 August 2023) concludes a trilogy of Kiefer exhibitions hosted by White Cube.
Walhalla (2016) fed off the heavenly hall of Norse mythology and its complex afterlife, while the sculptures and paintings of Superstrings, Runes, The Norns, Gordian Knot (2019) drew on Greek mythology and other ancient writings.
