“Ruins, for me, are the beginning,” Anselm Kiefer once said “With the debris, you can construct new ideas. They are symbols of a beginning.” Born in Germany in 1945, as W.W. II was ending, Kiefer knows about beginnings rooted in ruin. Materiality and construction are implicit in his art. Using pigments combined with metal, lead, and organic matter, his installations and paintings are often grayed, haunted. Work in this exhibition takes inspiration from the Norns and Gordian knots—mythic women and unsolvable problems. —E.C.