ERDBÄREN

Comment

Comment by Resident Curator on August 25, 2016 at 6:13pm

Curator’s Comments:

 

How could I have missed this piece?  I’ve admired your paintings in the past, and have been particularly enamored with the way you subtly weave layered associations into your animal subjects.  I now find myself transfixed by the image entitled Erdbaren.  (Translated as Earth Bears?) While technically skilled and sophistically, carries an uncanny association between bears as food.  Consumers are arguably accustomed to experiencing intact plastic bears holding honey or whole Haribo gummy bears, but there’s something inexplicably jarring about seeing rows of exquisitely detailed, decapitated heads.  I find it both beautiful and disturbing.  Since they vary so much by piece, the viewer can’t simply dismiss the “chocolates” as mass produced reproductions, but must confront them as individual entities. It conjures conceptual ideas about consumption of the natural world, possibly endangered species, cataloging and collecting.  Of course the combination of edibles and hair also reminded me of Meret Oppenheim, with her fetishistic Cup, or fur lined teacup.  I just love this work.