In the early 1990s, artist Helke Bayrle began filming the artists setting up the Portikus exhibition hall. She hadn’t been commissioned to do it, she didn’t need it. For the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main, to which the Portikus was connected, for professors and students, she was a reliable and attentive companion. Her first contribution was filmed with caution from a distance: crowds of people among the sculptures, enthusiasm for the vernissage. Someone even has a camera. “Gerhard!” she says, and the man stops, recognizes her and smiles at her. It is Gerhard Richter who, like her, is filming the Isa Genzken exhibition.
When Helke Bayrle came to the Portikus or any other art event in Frankfurt, Berlin or much more, something deep blue usually shone. His cap, his scarf, her shoes, but surely her eyes, always mischievous and friendly, even when she said something serious. Since 1992, her archive has included more than 180 exhibits that she has documented. Quiet, with time, although hardly anyone is reduced to more than five minutes. People look very high thoughtfully, long sticks are carried through the image, people smoke, people glue, look at the drawings together, but little on the screens.
From today’s perspective, they are fantastic contemporary documents and, as is always the case with contemporary witnesses, they are truly appreciated in all their dimensions only after the fact, not while it is happening. Who would have thought in 1993 that the young man on his knees, carefully assembling an oversized photo on paper with his thumbs along the edges, that this cute boy in a plaid shirt, listening to songs and hymns while working, exactly 30 years later will show the solo at MoMA. Wolfgang Tillmans felt at ease in Helke Bayrle’s presence.
“He did something out of his curiosity”
Born in 1941 in Thorn, Poland, she has worked closely with her husband, artist Thomas Bayrle, since 1969. Kasper König, founding director of Portikus, remembers that the first time she didn’t notice anything about their video footage during construction and openings. However, he believes that she knew from the start that it would become a lasting and continuous job. “She was always curious and she created something for her curiosity about her,” says König.
For its calm gaze, which is not fixed on the final bars, art is something that is taken for granted. It is almost a bit breathtaking to see Gregor Schneider build his overwhelming “HAUS ur”. Or Elmgreen and Dragset pulling up a rounded ramp, one of their first “Powerless Structures”, and descending laughing. Or Sarah Lucas, sitting on a stained curved mattress, playing with two oranges between her legs. This work, shown at Portikus in 1996, would later become iconic.
Helke Bayrle’s great documentary “Portikus Under Construction” was shown in 2017 at the Portikus, which had moved twice since its inception in 1987. It hasn’t missed a single exhibition, not even the current one by Asad Raza. Now Helke Bayrle is dead in Frankfurt am Main.
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