Horch! [Listen!] is the command emblazoned across the carpet in the special hexagonal space installed in Sadie Coles’s Kingly Street gallery devoted to the display of Kati Heck’s new cycle of six large paintings based on Mahler’s six-song symphony Das Lied von der Erde [The Song of the Earth]. And last night listen we did to a musical performance organised by Heck in response to the works. The hour-long event involved four of the artist’s musician friends delivering an emotionally charged interpretation of one of Mahler’s songs—Der Abschied (The Farewell)—directly in front of the disquieting painting bearing the same name and featuring a double-faced woman in a spooky moonlit wood, trailed by a demonic shadow and pursued by a fiery figure bearing an ominous resemblance to Iggy Pop.
Vocals were provided by the artist and musician Maarten Seghers, whose high-octane rendition of this song of death, darkness, loss and yearning was performed stripped to the waist, with many dramatic gestures and each sheet of music vigorously crumpled up and flung to the ground once completed. Accompanying him with matching brio were thebrothers Simon and Buni Lenski on cello and violin and Nicolas Rombouts on the contrabass. These three all feature prominently in another of Heck’s surrounding paintings, Trinklied vom Jammer der Erde (Drinking Song of the Earth’s Sorrow). Seeing them wield their instruments in front of their meticulously portrayed selves certainly added to the general air of uncanniness—the more so, since they weredisconcertingly dressed in identical garb to their painted dopplegangers. In all senses Heck’s paintings were brought to life in a satisfactorily unsettling fashion and everyone agreed that it made a welcome change to Christmas carols.