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Madeleine-Effekt

Place: Orangerie Schloss Benrath, Düsseldorf

Date: -

Artists: Isabella Fürnkäs, Marcel Hiller, Tom Król, Anna Virnich

Curated by: Leonie Runte

Works: Unpredictable Liars, Insomnia Drawings

A scent, a color, a fabric, a stroke - or that one taste. "The taste was that of that little piece of madeleine" (Marcel Proust), which, dunked in lime blossom tea, became the trigger to revive the past. A moment that becomes a catalyst and brings back into color a memory that was thought to have faded. It can return, be present, touching, dominating our present. It can let us indulge in reveries, it carries us through time to other places. This is how our memory of experience shapes our now. The small pastry with its catalytic effect from Marcel Proust's seven-part opus "In Search of Lost Time" provides the title for the exhibition. Surfaces, materials, smells create the basis for associations, they offer multi-layered approaches to one's own intrinsic engagement with memory itself. In their works, the artists* Isabella Fürnkäs, Marcel Hiller, Tom Król, and Anna Virnich create memory structures in their multifacetedness.

Memory, the past, and movement through time are central aspects in the oeuvre of Isabella Fürnkäs (b. 1988 Tokyo, Japan). In her works she negotiates themes such as corporeality, intimacy and self-perception, as well as alienation and patterns of communication. To address these themes, she uses numerous media, ranging from drawings, language, and gestures to sound and video works, performances, and spatial installations. A narrative moment runs through her work, creating a flow of language without always necessarily being language, but always with the possibility of language. Thus, words and images combine in her drawings, as "a kind of key to a level of meaning that hides the subconscious."(IF) In her Sculptural group of works Unpredictable Liars, which she constantly develops since 2017, she creates a giant supersized human counterpart. Fabric is similar to paper for Fürnkäs, and has been a recurring feature in her work since she was a student. She is interested in veiling and the question: what creates personality?

At a time when we are horrified by a war in Europe, when a worldwide pandemic confronts people with existential problems, when, despite everything, things are always supposed to go higher, faster and further, when social and cultural heritage is full of conflicts, the memory of "better days" is conjured up. Traditions are longingly cultivated. Omnipresent and essential, one's own and collective memory become the central subject. The exhibition concept is intended to pick up the visitors where they themselves need a trigger to stimulate their own memories, a trigger that evokes a feeling, an affect in themself.

A collaborative and very personal publication accompany the exhibition. It serves as a support for the artists' thoughts, it becomes a diary, an archive of memories.

- Text by Leonie Runte

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