Caught between pattern and motif
A street brawl, a warrior in Sudan civil war, the Bloods and Crips Gang, Guantanamo Bay prisoners, a Ku Klux Klan member, a soldier with tank trap adorn the large installation in form of a curtain. Embedded in a stylized landscape the ten templates from the Internet appear as repeating motifs. The copper engraving-like drawing, the reddish hue, and the fine foliage refer to the French Toile de Jouy fabrics of the Rococo. From the ongoing repeating pattern only at a second glance recent media images, associated with violence, are dissolving instead of the supposed idyllic pastoral images á la Boucher or Fragonard. Camouflaged in the figurative pattern they appear irritating. // Text: Genoveva Rückert (Curator OK Center for Contemporary Art in Linz / Austria)