Anti Sculpture Angst Therapy

The process behind Anti Sculpture Angst Therapy by Lieven Meyer is a way of rethinking the period of distancing and isolation that we have all experienced for more than a year, in the form of group (self-)therapy, conceived as a rite of passage. Indeed, during this time, the middle of our faces has become a critical zone, revealing a permanent and inextricable danger. This threat, highlighted by the mandatory wearing of face coverings, has spread across the globe, from yesterday to tomorrow.

The name “Anti Sculpture” refers to the origins of the mask, approached as a sculptural object — fetish and/or ritual — worn on the face. During the Baroque period in England from the seventeenth to the early eighteenth century, the mask was the subject of complex multidisciplinary performances interspersed with grotesque interludes called “ante-maskes” or “ante-masques.” Lieven Meyer transposes this concept to the context of sculpture in motion. In his hands, the anti sculpture becomes a tool of outlandish entertainment that reveals this widespread crisis in a different way.

For this project, Meyer has used the casting technique to appropriate a monument built during the German Third Reich (1933–1945). The sculpture, which was set aside for a few years after the war, is still in the public space, but disconnected from its historical context and masked by anonymity. In a dark nod to “Angst”, the German phenomenon of existential anxiety stemming from the traumatic WWII experience, Anti Sculpture Angst Therapy nevertheless embraces a kind of resilience.

The artist's act of transformation contributes to a displacement, taking the historical public sculpture through different stages and states: trauma, erasure, burying through anonymization, un-burying through reappropriation, misappropriation, unveiling and exposure. The question here is whether there is a partial form of real reparation beyond an update and revelation.