Lurk-Hive Balance
July 25 - August 23, 2014
Inside the Scrovegni Chapel of Padua, there is a fresco by Giotto di Bondione depicting the founder of the church, Enrico Scrovegni, a rich banker, merchant and nobleman.
In the fresco Scrovegni hands over a miniature version of that same chapel to Virgin Mary, hoping that she will forgive his and his families usury misdeeds and hoping they will not send him to purgatory, but take him into heaven. Enrico Scrovegni did not feel ashamed to make his purposes very clear: To get what he wanted he even had his tricky act illustrated on the chapel's wall.
I have copied some houses in the backgrounds of further frescoes in the chapel as models, but gave them a new function as spice shelves. They do not only contain spices but filling elements of fancy fabrics, meandering and pleated around the spices, embedding them softly into the shell of the shelf, making their patient wait for the moment of employ enjoyable like a long day in bed.
A group of warped black and white photos is collaged on to painted figures, collaged into an ordinary Altbau living room. It is dubious whether these painted figures are living images with legs and heads, or if they are dressed up as/with images. There are several layers of fore- and backgrounds, and here those layers are standing in debate just like the figures do to each other.
In the second collage the background figures made their way to the fore and now block out parts of the space behind them.
The same black and white photos of people standing in a queue waiting to look at the inside of Notre Dame were also used for the backgrounds of two roller blinds. I call these people 'unintended group', since the purpose of their being together doesn't include any other kind of identification than looking at the same building.
A selection of celebrities is collaged in the empty spaces between the unintended group. Celeb-patterns of Justin, Cara, Miley, Eminem, Rihanna, Britney and Lindsay Lohan, who hasn't gotten much attention for her creative output for a long time, but a lot for her struggles of any other kind, and who adds a nice ginger-and-orange tonality to the collage, not only because of the hair but also the wooden shades of the court room, whereas Rihanna is mostly captured at night, and the nighty darkness flirts with the contrast of the black and white photograph.
All of them have been declared as Enfant terrible before - a phenomenon very much loved by the tabloids. The cut out images are taken by paparazzi, no red carpets photos are being used here, and they are carefully connected by their looks: each of them is glancing at the next one, a chain of looks appears and they are not looking at us.
- Anne Speier
