In the garden hall of the Museum Kunst der Westküste, five display booths serve to present various artistic practices. Last year, the interior as a subject of art was the thematic link tying together a variety of works; this year’s changes of scenery series addresses the relationship between man and nature. In the manner of a station drama, the audience moves from one display to the next: on view are busy flagwaving carpenter ants, a palm tree sewn from a green-beige-coloured police uniform, a video performance with plastic bags that are nested in one another, a hybrid avian creature made of bronze, and a negotiating table turned upside down and converted into a motorised fishing boat. The different works are trenchant artistic statements on man’s intervention in nature and point to the contradictions of existence in a globalised world. Subtly ironic and ranging from surrealistic performance to playful transformation, they present the cycle of life as a tragicomedy, where laughter and alarm are inextricably linked.
Artists: Jennifer Allora & Guillermo Calzadilla (USA/Cuba), Donna Conlon (Panama), Dorothy Cross (Ireland), Peter Rösel (Germany).
