NOTHING’S AS IT SEEMS
ARTWORKS SERIES – Liberating streetart artworks from their presentation
Unusual characters stroll down the street, people of all cultures meet by chance, go their separate ways, hurry past, talk on the phone, send an SMS, make selfies, show off or are just simply there. The sewn pictures look like random snapshots taken on the street, recalling pictures from social networks by bloggers like the Satorialist. The people, quotes, fabrics, and backgrounds they depict are objets trouvés, things found and put together like samples to form new textile collages. Capturing them in a picture creates contexts of meaning between the protagonists and their background. Often protagonists know nothing of the context they happen to be moving across. Thus an orthodox jew becomes a new lifestyle fashion, a woman in a burqa standing in front of an ad poster turns into a political statement, a woman at a traffic light is told not to go, but rather to speak. Is the ruff collar she is wearing an article of fashion, or did she have an accident?
NO WAY BACK
OUT OF STOCK
NO PICTURES PLEASE
BYEBYE BABY
GONZALO
MIND THE GAP
PRODUCER
HAZEL
TATORT
AM I HIM?
SELFIE
PEPPA
OUT OF STOCK – ART BLOGGER
LONDON CALLING
DON'T WALK
FOLLOW
DON'T FOLLOW
LOCKENKOPF
LOOKING AT
BLOGGER
CATWALK STREET
DIS-COVERED
MÄDCHEN
NO!
A little girl hops across the street holding her mother's hand, while on the ground the outline of a person is drawn. The title of the picture is "Mom, where is Daddy?". We will never learn the answer because mother and daughter are already out of earshot… everything points to the father having been the victim, because this is how we have use to read pictures. Perhaps the outline was merely a work of street art, who knows? We think we know the famous picture of Banksy, where he seems to be sitting in the familiar pose, but it is actually a complete fabrication, since anyone else could just as well be sitting there, covered by a hoodie. We like to adorn ourselves with quotes of famous artists or use a selfie stick to show the world how we get around. These situations seem so familiar – we know what the pictures want tell us.
SERIES OF ARTWORKS / Exhibition concept /Mixed textiles / Munich 2013
Hanging together
Pictures not only work as single items, but are conceived as a series. Each picture has a zipper on the side and can be attached to another picture – but also detached again later. This enables the artworks to leave the rigid structure of a presentation. Moving freely in space, instead of beeing forced into frames. The sequence of pictures can be changed anytime to create a new story.
“PICTURES can be zipped together, or onto matching COATS and JACKETS, bringing them back to their origin: the street. Art itself can now go out for a walk, visit openings, concerts, go on trips...”