I really don’t know how I managed not to pick up on it, but last year a group of German artists put on a VMs-themed installation at the Grauerhof in Aschersleben entitled “DAS VOYNICH MANUSKRIPT: eine künstlersicht auf ein rätsel” (an artist’s view of a mystery), featuring pieces by Rüdiger Giebler, Moritz Götze, Olaf Holzapfel, Alicja Kwade, Daniel Lergon / Gregory Carlock, Via Lewandowsky, Johannes Nagel, Jorinde Voigt, and Ralf Ziervogel. If you go to the site, clicking on any of the pictures launches a pop-up 32-slide slideshow tour of the exhibition, which is rather nice.
I particularly like Lergon and Carlock’s ‘book object’, with its spurious botany and implausible fold-out page arrangement. But perhaps the standout contemporary art piece of the show was by Berlin-based Via Lewandowsky (1963-) called “Okay“, formed of the Voynichese letters spelling ‘okay’ (in EVA) in striking green neon.
If you want to see ‘Okay’ for yourself, it’s currently on display at the Galerie Karin Sachs in Munich until the 3rd March 2011 as part of a show of Lewandowsky’s work called “Archäologie der Ähnlichkeit“.
A pity indeed, I would have gone and see it.
Anyone can be excused for overlooking it though. Ascherleben isn’t exactly the navel of the Universe. It isn’t even the navel of central East Germany, where it is located…
Cheers, Rene