Looking Forward. Looking Back.

Installation, New Positions, ART COLOGNE
2015

This installation combines two works: "Vermont Life" and "Net: Opa" – both use semi-fictional collections that have been created or found as a basis. 

As with the two pictures "Opa 1" and "Opa 2", the collage "Net: Opa" revolves around my grandfather's possessions; left behind when he died of cancer and stored in boxes in my grandmother's attic. He was a doctor and a massive collector with many passions. Being up in the attic was always like a treasure hunt was for my cousins and me – it was a place of excitement and wonder. Medical appliances, model making equipment, N8 and Super 8 cameras and endless rolls of film, glass photo plates with portraits of hospital patients, sailing equipment, every imaginable instruction manual, and so much more. I never had the chance to meet him in person, so to work with his things, notes, and film material was a way for me to discover who he was and project myself into his life. 

The "Vermont Life" collage was developed after I spent three months in the Mad River Valley and on Shelburne Point of Lake Champlain in Vermont, USA. It was my first visit to the United States. I met many interesting characters, from MIT Scientists, old New York Painters that moved to the mountains to become shepherd, multigenerational shipyard owners, a survivalist young couple living in a yurt, and many more. The arrangement is more a transference of how I felt when being there, grasping this wild mixture of the wilderness's raw nature and the strange connection to American consumerism.


Edition #1


Edition #2


Edition #3


Installation, New Positions, ArtCologne, 2015

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