Christian Friedrich
14 Nov - 23 Dec 2009
CHRISTIAN FRIEDRICH
"People Going Home to Die"
14 Nov 2009 - 23 Dec 2009
Hidden behind a peeling, golden mask, Christian Friedrich (b. 1977 in Freiburg, Germany) plays the protagonist in his own film. He is introduced time and again in various fragments: he is the hermit in a rural setting; the clergyman preaching hell and damnation from his pulpit; the obsessed stalker spying on his loved one from nearby. The disastrous outcome is embraced long before it comes into sight.
In Galerie Fons Welters, Friedrich shows his latest film and sculptures with the title of People Going Home to Die. Whereas the work that he recently presented at De Ateliers was characterised by the raw aesthetics of home videos and a self-obsessed, pornographic theme, People Going Home to Die is his first narrative film, in which he employs the same personal obsessions to produce a nightmarish whole. The starting point is his own, written work of “hobby level” metaphysics – about being and non-being; the world of the living and the dead.
Although serious in subject matter, the text is brought to the audience as a jazz number, theatrically and replete with self-mockery. The voice of the female jazz singer carries far, but her serious words put the associated images in a kitsch light that seems inappropriate. This double tone of the sincere and the meaninglessly sentimental recurs everywhere in the film and, to an extent, is enclosed within the theme itself. Personal moments, such as love, sex and even death are simultaneously individual and general. Although highly personal, they are nevertheless negotiable. The depiction of these intimate moments soon becomes banal, and Friedrich then adds a dose of shameless theatricality to it all.
The interchangeability is not just reflected in the role Christian Friedrich plays in his own film, also in his sculptural gestures, where he makes direct use of the body of the actors, as well as his own body. The plaster impressions of certain body postures that are displayed in the anteroom have significance in the context of the film, but they also provide connecting points that enable one to take a step further. A baroque world is created. Although Friedrich depicts his own downfall, he predicts a resurrection, to which his sculptures bear witness.
[Laurie Cluitmans]
"People Going Home to Die"
14 Nov 2009 - 23 Dec 2009
Hidden behind a peeling, golden mask, Christian Friedrich (b. 1977 in Freiburg, Germany) plays the protagonist in his own film. He is introduced time and again in various fragments: he is the hermit in a rural setting; the clergyman preaching hell and damnation from his pulpit; the obsessed stalker spying on his loved one from nearby. The disastrous outcome is embraced long before it comes into sight.
In Galerie Fons Welters, Friedrich shows his latest film and sculptures with the title of People Going Home to Die. Whereas the work that he recently presented at De Ateliers was characterised by the raw aesthetics of home videos and a self-obsessed, pornographic theme, People Going Home to Die is his first narrative film, in which he employs the same personal obsessions to produce a nightmarish whole. The starting point is his own, written work of “hobby level” metaphysics – about being and non-being; the world of the living and the dead.
Although serious in subject matter, the text is brought to the audience as a jazz number, theatrically and replete with self-mockery. The voice of the female jazz singer carries far, but her serious words put the associated images in a kitsch light that seems inappropriate. This double tone of the sincere and the meaninglessly sentimental recurs everywhere in the film and, to an extent, is enclosed within the theme itself. Personal moments, such as love, sex and even death are simultaneously individual and general. Although highly personal, they are nevertheless negotiable. The depiction of these intimate moments soon becomes banal, and Friedrich then adds a dose of shameless theatricality to it all.
The interchangeability is not just reflected in the role Christian Friedrich plays in his own film, also in his sculptural gestures, where he makes direct use of the body of the actors, as well as his own body. The plaster impressions of certain body postures that are displayed in the anteroom have significance in the context of the film, but they also provide connecting points that enable one to take a step further. A baroque world is created. Although Friedrich depicts his own downfall, he predicts a resurrection, to which his sculptures bear witness.
[Laurie Cluitmans]