solo show 2024, Kunstverein Gastgarten, curated by Heiko Lietz

Sewing machine Bernina Update 96, bed, curtain, paper bags, plush heart, handbag, bow, cut flowers, gift cards, paper bags, jewellery, chocolate, sound, Kuschelrock Volume 1-8, Tina Turner twenty four seven, chest of drawers, children's toy, watercolour pencil set

Sophie Stadler 

It seems like there is an agreement, a Rom-Com-Conspiracy, a catalogue of tropes to say ‘Forgive me!’. The bed full of flowers and chocolates, Gift-Cards, underwear, stuffed animals – a ridiculous repertoire of appeasement and reconciliation. It’s not for nothing, that offences and crimes, which are seen as excusable in the context of dominant moral standards and sometimes are perceived as good, are called peccadillos, trivial offences or in german: ‘Kavaliersdelikt’: What disguises itself as love, can move forward as violence.

The german word ‘Versöhnung’, meaning reconciliation, stems from ‘Sühnen’, meaning to offset or to get rid of. What needs to be erased or compensated for are the memories and the knowledge of the ongoing violence, which shows itself only punctually. Where capitalism informs the development of our relationships and transforms love into goods, violence, even if it disguises itself, becomes a currency of love. The accumulation of generic consumer goods reveals, what seems to be a personal or a private problem, is a structural one. It includes gestures of reconciliation. One can recognize these structures repeatably aiming to maintain their loop.

From underneath the bed ballades emanate, pitched down by about -430%. Which is the number of cases of intimate partner violence recorded in Germany in 2021 according to an analysis by the Federal Criminal Police Office. The loop shows how the music collection named Kuschelrock unintentionally tells the truth: Toni Braxton sings about time travel under the conditions of the patriarchy in Un-Break my heart, Tina Turner’s A Fool in Love is the gospel of codependency and Chicago’s Hard to say I’m sorry laments in a known whiny-white-boy-style about their own inability to apologize.

Kunstverein Gastgarten

Publikation: Lots of gifts. Nothing I ever wanted

Review Gallerytalk.net

1 Number of cases of intimate partner violence recorded in Germany in 2021 according to an analysis by the Federal Criminal Police Office.