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Exterior view of The Feuerle Collection in Berlin. Photo by Def Image. Courtesy The Feuerle Collection.
Désiré Feuerle’s private museum in the Kreuzberg district of Berlin is concerned first and foremost with the senses. Visits to the Feuerle Collection—which are by appointment—begin in the “sound room,” an antechamber in the 6,480-square-meter Second World War telecommunications bunker renovated by British architect John Pawson. After leaving their mobile phones at the entrance, visitors are asked to wait in the dark while listening to a short work by minimalist composer John Cage to “cleanse the palate” and acclimatize to the space’s low light before they proceed to the collection.
After sound comes sight, with the first of two large rooms containing a combination of Khmer statuary and Chinese imperial furniture. In the 1990s, at his commercial gallery in Cologne, Feuerle experimented with juxtaposing antique and contemporary objects, and this same curatorial approach is central here. As a result, these objects—several of them religious in origin—are deliberately coupled with sculpture by contemporary artists like Anish Kapoor, or framed erotic images by the Japanese photographer, artist and Nikkatsu Roman Porno director Nobuyoshi Araki, among them depictions of kinbaku, or Japanese rope bondage. Origins, however, are not of great importance to Feuerle, and the pieces on display are organized entirely around their aesthetic qualities. The works are presented without labels and visitors are asked to consider the collection as a cumulative work—a Gesamtkunstwerk—rather than focusing on the history or provenance of any one item. At best, the consequence is that the histories of these objects are benignly subsumed in a deeply individual vision, a synesthetic amalgamation that puts form—as understood by a single collector—absolutely before function and all other concerns. I couldn’t help but think that a degree of cultural erasure was taking place here in favor of a personal erotic sensibility, and that, in the service of this sensibility, a continent risked being reduced to a monolith.
Whatever the reality, in the purely aesthetic domain to which Feuerle’s collection claims to belong, it excels. The subtle and complex lighting that draws each of these objects from the dark uses shadow as a draughtsman skilfully uses a black line, and a glass wall separates the space from another—“the lake room”—which contains only a body of water whose immutable stillness creates a sense of balance and harmony that legitimizes the collector’s claim to creating a sensuous Gesamtkunstwerk, if not the curatorial choices behind it.
The Feuerle Incense Room at The Feuerle Collection, featuring black wood incense table and stools in the foreground, and a late-15th-century black lacquered table against the wall. A 17th-century wooden Khmer throne sits in the corner of the room. Photo by Def Image. Courtesy The Feuerle Collection, Berlin.
Now, 18 months after the private museum’s opening in April 2016, Feuerle has added a room where he intends to hold incense ceremonies, introducing an experience that stimulates another of the senses. The ceremonies date back to Han-dynasty China (206 BCE–220 CE) and were particularly popular among the nobility of the later Song Dynasty (960–1279), during which their aesthetic and social functions somewhat superseded their spiritual ones. The collector’s interest in the aesthetics of the ceremony arose when he was invited to partake in one while visiting Taiwan, and he set out to create the new room in collaboration with John Pawson; Chinese art consultant Jerry Chen; the Degoo-Chunzai workshop led by Kevin Chen, which continues to use traditional Chinese manufacturing techniques; and Taiwanese incense expert Wang Jun-Chin. The inauguration of the room took place on October 12, with Wang acting as master of ceremonies, and involved a selection of specially designed tools, most important of which was a blackwood incense table equipped with an electronic heating system that took a year to construct using traditional methods.
The meditative ritual involved the burning of two distinct varieties of rare incense wood, carried out by Wang with custom-made utensils, including a pair of pincers forged from 24-karat gold, as well as a fan made from macaw feathers, gold and bamboo that was used to waft smoke toward those present. Simple, sensual and slow—although not as slow as traditional versions that lack the help of an electric heater—the ceremony is an opportunity to reflect on a sense that is often overlooked in art. Feuerle says that the ritual is something he is keen to introduce to Europe, where it is relatively unknown. However, given that a visit to the elegant, black-mirrored room—where the S-Train occasionally rumbles overhead through this working-class migrant quarter—begins at 250 euros per head, it’s questionable just how much of Europe the practice will reach.
Ned Carter Miles is ArtAsiaPacific’s London desk editor.
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