Linee di campo magnetico [Lines of a Magnetic Field]

Installation view, Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, 2017 (detail) | The most imposing tower in the entire installation is characterized by a series of lead films running all the way down around it, ultimately reaching the base and laying alongside an empty film reel and a camera made of the same material. The choice of lead, a material through which light cannot pass (and therefore prevents the production of any images), can be interpreted in different ways: from the Nazi attempt to erase Jewish culture and ethnic minorities, to the iconoclastic battle that periodically runs through Western culture, to the Byzantine era all the way to the Lutheran era and the conception, often cited by Kiefer, that “every work of art cancels out those that precede it”.