Shows

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Berlin Masters

Place: Wilhelm Hallen, Berlin

Date:

Works: Unpredictable Liars Revolt

In the age of full-blown consumerism and ideological inertia, individual identity is primarily communicated through labels with which an imagined self is positioned and valorised. The different needs and constraints result in a patchwork of veiling self-dramatisation, an anomythic hide-and-seek game of surfaces in which analogue and virtual individuals threaten to collapse. The complexity and diversity of semiotic references form a cross-milieu system that can no longer be penetrated individually and leaves its bearers behind. In the context of the sound collage, the voices of the latter - once the medium with which self-image and self-assurance were communicated - become a barely perceptible whispering, speaking and singing, which at the same time invites direct sensory experience as a stream of consciousness and negotiates questions of role-playing, isolation, interpersonal communication and social co-existence.

"Human-like figures, magnificently draped in colours and patterns, nourished by their engagement with Japanese theatre and arts and crafts; with the appearance of having grown out of painting, populate spaces and, in a limp, melting state, pour colourfully across the floor, becoming drawing again." - Andreas Reihse

The main impulse for the first version of the installation Unpredictable Liars (2017) comes inspired by Japanese Nō theatre, which already has inherent loss of the individual through the use of centuries-old symbols. Another version was formed in 2018-19 with the series Unpredictable Liars II, where the ghostly transhuman characters seem like the last survivors of a utopia. In the new series Unpredictable Liars Revolt (2021), the figures have been encased in epoxy, which further emphasises the congealed character of their disguise, devoid of meaning and stripped of interhumanity.

- Text by Matthias Jakob Becker

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