The Holy Petrol Station of Imaginary Penitents

Krzysztof Honowski with Laura Sundermann and Maggie Siebert

Curated by Christopher Gerberding

Alte Tankstelle Deutz, Cologne 17.02.2022 - 10.03.2022

Opening 17.02.2022, 5 - 9 PM

In The Holy Petrol Station of Imaginary Penitents, Krzysztof Honowski presents a new installation conceived specifically for the Alte Tankstelle Deutz. The work consists of a triptych of moving image works centred around a re-telling of the story of Saint Mary of Egypt, a hermit saint of penitents. If you travel south from Cologne on the regional train past Brühl you pass by a chapel dedicated to this saint on a once private estate that has now become a museum. The Alte Tankstelle's unique geography, as a kind of hermitage at once quite near the centre of Cologne and almost somehow outside of it lead the artist, together with the actress Laura Sundermann, to reflect on the parallels between these two spaces: one consecrated for the philosophical pursuits of a small elite, the other consecrated by the partying of ravers unknown. Sundermann's monologue imagines an emancipated Saint Mary, calling out the absurd stories that men tell themselves of where the priorities of the divine lie. Completing the triptych are two works by Honowski that were previously presented by ISSUE Project Room, New York and AvanTokyo, Japan, which consider the incidental macabre of unceasing production in the face of global crisis.

Accompanying the exhibition is a new short story by writer Maggie Siebert that reflects upon the encounter in the desert of Saint Mary of Egypt with Zosimas of Palestine.

From Zosimas by Maggie Siebert:

Many years ago she awoke floating atop a sea of people. They stood beneath her and guided her body with their hands. None of them were clothed. When she looked out to see where the ocean of bodies might end, she could see only the tops of heads far into the horizon. She panicked and tried to stand and run across them, but she immediately lost her balance. When she tried to pull herself forward, as if swimming, the people below flipped her onto her back. Paralyzed by fear, she allowed herself to float for a while, letting the hands carry her where they wanted. But soon bodies began to rise from the crowd, and she was no longer the only one lost at sea. She rejoiced, and the hands directed her closer to the new castaways, whom she embraced. And when she did she felt herself grow slick and it was the natural thing to pull them inside her, or to insert herself inside them. As she did, more bodies rose to join them and the hands beneath pushed them faster and faster. And soon she could not tell herself from others. It was as if her tongue was many, her hands ever multiplying, a hot, pulsating, oppressive and sweet sensation flooding her senses until it all blended into skin: an endless, rolling wall, wet like the inside of a cheek in some places but covered in papules and moles and hair in others. She could not say how long she persisted in this state, whether weeks or decades. But after a time, perception itself started to give way. As her vision was about to give way to nothing but blinding white heat, she hit the ground hard.