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Ursula Döbereiner | | |
Press Release:
We are pleased to welcome you to the opening of the exhibition POSTER_BOX Teil 2 by Ursula Döbereiner at LAURA MARS GRP. on 2 July, 2004, at 8:00 PM.
Following POSTER_BOX Teil 1 by Kerstin Drechsel, Ursula Döbereiner's POSTER_BOX Teil 2, the second section of this joint project by the two artists, is now on view. Part 2 is inspired by mass-produced images on posters in teen magazines and the cheap posters offered in gift shops. Everyone is familiar with this archive, produced by the entertainment industry, of constantly recycled wishes, dreams and memories, in which Christina Aguilera reigns alongside Che Guevara, and ponies, nude soap opera stars and tropical beaches are on a par with hip-hop bands, race cars or football players. Just as posters, in their function as decorative elements in young peoples rooms, represent a stereotyped idea of how teenagers find their way in the real world and project themselves into a "fulfilled" future, the depletion and deconstruction of prefabricated poses, gestures, star worship, and ideals are at the centre of Döbereiner's POSTER_BOX Teil 2.
The focus is on self-empowerment and artistic appropriation. With the use of computer plotting and a series of drawings, Döbereiner transforms the gallery space into a room for memories and production, in which personal taste, autobiographical elements and the artistic exploration of the medium of drawing overlap. The starting-points for Döbereiner's work are a concentrated and ecstatic incorporation and adaptation of musical styles, film images, advertisements, record covers and pictures from magazines. While the artist listens to music, simultaneously drawing copies of found images or her own photos from her archives, she transports herself into an adolescent yet distanced state. Drawings of butterflies are blown up to huge dimensions on a computer and papered onto walls and doors; girlfriends recreate the photos of celebrities in an entire issue of Vanity Fair magazine; driven by music, lines in ballpoint pen and cross-hatching create psychedelic light effects and out-of-focus movements.
The protagonists in Döbereiner's vibrating images appear to already be past their youth and carry the marks of a life lived: Gena Rowlands, dancing psychotically in John Cassavetes film A Woman Under the Influence; the face, obscured by sunglasses, of Berlin artist S.M. van der Linden; Cosey Fanni Tutti of the band Throbbing Gristle. The states that Döbereiner describes shift between rapture and absolute control race cars spin out, surfers ride giant waves, an image of musician Scott Walker is reflected in a dilated pupil. Döbereiner contrasts the infantile promises of mass-media images with the professional routine of a junkie: her poster box cuts up basic materials the images with the precision of a razorblade, and shows viewers how they can use it to quell their own longings: glamorously, without scruples, and utterly without innocence. |
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