The age of oil: Wolfsburg art museum shows horror and beauty – culture

If you dig into the depths of history, both personal and general, you are guaranteed to find oil. The youthful love of the record had the hydrocarbon as a technical prerequisite, as did the family vacation with a car on Lake Garda. Oil connects the stuck sea bird after a tanker accident with the erotic accessories lipstick and mascara. World War II would have been as impossible as the moon landing without fossil fuel, Esso tanks like Easy Rider. And the plastic world also developed from an oil-based insulation solution for electrical cables on warships into the greatest promise of freedom for mass consumption. From nylon and Tupperware to Nike and Tetra Pak, Mother Oil gave us status and packaging.

Humanity will live and die with the contradiction that 90 million barrels of crude oil are pumped out of the earth every day for our beloved habits

Of course, more and more people have recently become aware that global warming and marine pollution stem from geological vampirism. But for a few years now, flight-intensive travel diplomacy between Kyoto, Durban and Glasgow has been fighting against it, but it fears nothing more than serious economic consequences for its oil-based industries. The prosperity promise of the industrial nations therefore allows only very few alternatives to the creeping end of the world in soot particles. Let us come to terms with it: Mankind will live and die with the contradiction that 90 million barrels of crude oil are pumped from the deep tanks of the earth per day for our beloved habits. By the way, a barrel is 159 liters and generates an average of 500 kilos of greenhouse gas.

Wolf Vostell’s “B 52 lipstick bomber” from 1968.

(Photo: © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2021, Courtesy LUDWIGGALERIE Schloss Oberhausen)

How do you get a grip on such a universal theme, which really intervenes in all spheres of existence, with an exhibition? The big show “Oil” at the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, which aims to present as many aspects as possible in 220 works of art, documents and artefacts as well as a thick catalog, has initially chosen a well-balanced subtitle: “Beauty and horror of the petroleum age”. In all balance, it is clarified in advance that one should not judge the Petro era as a whole in a negative way. And in fact, the fairness of the curators towards all positive and negative aspects creates a certain feeling of fatalism in front of the oil necessities in the visitor. Because who wants to live without a cell phone, bike, vacation, dishwasher, garden hose, ballpoint pen and glasses, where materials and energies made from oil are involved everywhere? Or without a car?

Who wants to live without a cell phone, vacation, dishwasher and glasses, where materials and energies made from oil are involved everywhere? Or without a car?

At this point of the optimal fairness of the point of view, the question must then be asked whether half the praise to what is still the most important energy resource in the world has something to do with the fact that the VW Group pays and watches in the background of this foundation museum? Definitely not, says the new director Andreas Beitin. He was able to conceive and design the exhibition with the two curators Alexander Klose and Benjamin Steininger, who came up with the idea for “Oil”, without the slightest interference on the part of the main employer of the Autostadt. And there is no reason to assume that this serious exhibition organizer, who is one of the museum people who is most intensely committed to the conversion of energy-intensive houses into green museums, is telling the untruth. Still, “Oil” has a compromising history.

Because the theme show was originally advertised by the previous director Ralf Beil, and he was fired in 2018 because of a serious conflict of contents with the Wolfsburg-based company while he was preparing the oil exhibition. In 2016, Beil dared to also address the Volkswagen emissions scandal in the “Wolfsburg Unlimited” show – with an unpleasant video showing the sweating CEO Martin Winterkorn at the press conference, at which he carried out the systematic, environmentally harmful fraud on millions of diesel engines VW AG had to admit. Under no circumstances did the VW-led museum board of trustees want to leave this unruly director responsible for another exhibition, the content of which had to do with the company’s brand essence.

Wolfsburg Oil Art Museum.  Beauty and horror of the petroleum age (4.9.2021 - 9.1.2022)

Romuald Hazoumès “Elf rien à foutre” from 2005.

(Photo: Florian Kleinefenn / © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2021; Courtesy Magnin-A Gallery, Photo: Florian Kleinefenn)

Now one cannot blame the exhibition that was finally realized, and above all the texts in the catalog, for suppressing the critical consequences for the climate, the environment and global politics that have been brought about by mass mobility through explosion engines for around 100 years. From the fetish character of the car to the destroyed landscapes in oil-producing dictatorships to the carbon footprint of private transport, nothing is concealed here that is part of the oil mess. Only a well-founded criticism of the economic system questions and interests that cause these negative factors does not really take place in the exhibition. The very large amount of image and text information are on an equal footing. There is no clearly recognizable attitude that the visitor could deal with.

Wolfsburg Oil Art Museum.  Beauty and horror of the petroleum age (4.9.2021 - 9.1.2022)

Sylvie Fleury’s “Untitled (Soft Rocket)” from 1995.

(Photo: © Sylvie Fleury; Courtesy Sprüth Magers)

The fossilization of an ichthyosaurus from the time when the oil deposits were made from organic material can be found in the exhibition hall as well as trendy Chinese propaganda posters on industrial production. Videos of the struggle of the people in the oil-contaminated Niger Delta against Shell and ExxonMobile as well as the corrupt Nigerian state meet proud postcard collections from historic mining cities. A wedding meeting of oil sheiks in Qatar without women has the same value as Esso’s proud advertising campaign that 3 out of 5 bombs that fell on Germany and Japan during World War II only exploded because of their products. And humor shouldn’t be missing either. In 1944, Karl Valentin recommended that the German pilots drop their bombs over Germany and the British drop their bombs at home, because “the success would be the same. But how much petrol would have been saved”.

Wolfsburg Oil Art Museum.  Beauty and horror of the petroleum age (4.9.2021 - 9.1.2022)

Hans Haackes “MetroMobiltan” from 1985.

(Photo: © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2021, bpk / CNAC-MNAM / Georges Meguerditchian)

The main part of the exhibition is made up of artist works that have sometimes ironically, sometimes documentary, sometimes wistful or even critical of institutions designed something on the subject of oil as a raw material. A buckled pillow rocket by Sylvie Fleury tells of the broken dreams about a life in space. Steiner and Lenzlinger produce green crystals to make a very aesthetic reference to the fact that world fertilizer production also has its roots in petroleum. Wolfgang Mattheur’s symbolic painting tells of the longing for travel in the GDR. And Hans Haacke is building an altar for the conflicts that the sponsorship of toxic companies in museums causes.

The elaborate historical overview show provides less orientation than abundance

However, this work, which deals with Mobil Oil and the Metropolitan Museum in New York, does not have the sharpness that would lead to Andreas Beitin being kicked out by VW. It is a piece of the puzzle in an elaborate historical overview that provides less orientation than abundance. And especially at a time when there is more urgent need to talk about alternatives to oil-based prosperity, future options are completely left out. Visitors who stay in the exhibition long enough to really have looked at and understood all 220 elements will probably leave with the feeling that they are carrying two oil tanks of information with them without knowing where to steer with it.

Oil. The beauty and horror of the petroleum age. Wolfsburg Art Museum. Until January 9th. The catalog costs 45 euros.

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