German artist Anselm Kiefer takes an increasingly rare monumental approach to his sculptures and paintings. Each a rich glut of matter and allusion, they seem somewhat alien in a landscape currently littered with artists advancing by more evasive means. Familiar, yes, for Kiefer has been producing hefty, turbulent odes to Germany's dark past with a dogged consistency since the 1970s, when he was schooled by Joseph Beuys, among others. Using an extravagance of material – great swathes of paint, metals and earth – and incorporating texts and landscapes that allude to Teutonic mythology, religion and global history, Kiefer's ironclad commitment to confronting the past evinces an unapologetic solemnity, the sort often side-stepped by those of a newer generation.
The largest UK presentation of Kiefer's work to-date, 'Il Mistero delle Cattedrali' takes its title from a 1926 publication by Fulcanelli claiming that the Gothic cathedrals of Europe had openly displayed the hidden code of alchemy for over 700 years. Framing a temporally disparate range of works – from sculptures of the late 1980s, through to a new series of paintings from 2010-11 – with this esoteric reference, Kiefer emphasises his interest in the hurrying of time, and in the acceleration of transformations. This is a potent reference, one telling of the artist's struggles with a perception of his country's collective memory loss. Further, this alchemical allusion speaks of Kiefer's enduring occupation with entropy, and more generally, his tenacious commitment to the belief that decay courts creation.
Stand-alone sculptures – aeroplane wings, gigantic books, a rickety tandem alluding to 'Merkaba', the throne-chariot of God in Judaism – are wrought in sheets of lead, wood and steel, and placed on monolithic rock-like plinths. Finished with terracotta, salt and resin, these mournful works have the look of aged and battered relics. Coupling his intellectual excursions with a material interest, many parts of the works on show, including whole canvases, have been laid bare to the wind, rain and sun, quickening the oxidisation process. A rusty satellite dish, for example, welded on to the surface of an imposing canvas, has been weathered until almost skeletal. And a patinated palette of rusted hues, ochres, graphites and silvery pale greens, dominate throughout.
Taking as their subject a specific landscape, Kiefer's newest paintings prove to be the most rewarding. Four mammoth canvases depict the interiors and exteriors of Berlin's Tempelhof airport. Now bereft of function, this was originally designed by Albert Speer to be the gateway to Hitler's Germania. Demanding the greatest attention, expansive painting 'Del rosa miel apibus', depicts the airport's vast abeyant interior, with a heaving surface both aged and disturbed. Over this canvas Kiefer has suspended a sculptural infestation of large stiff sunflowers, drained of life, hanging head down, dead yet still imposing. Arresting for both the blatancy of its address, in both scale and subject, this new painting is exemplary of Kiefer's disregard for hopeful images, and his resistance to absolving sites such as this of their weighty burden.