Lucie Stahl
The Simple Life
06 Jun - 28 Jul 2018
LUCIE STAHL
The Simple Life
6 June – 28 July 2018
Turbid masses, black oil. An offshore drilling platform.
A kind of recluse, dropout - a put-on „Walden-hairstyle" transforms a mannequin.
Hillbilly elegy.
View through a milky window / on barn / house / sunset. The own life plan checking -
My house. My car. My ground.
Regionalism - The Simple Life, or what is regarded as such. New Artisan, Nostalgia Ultra.
A wagon carries us through the night in serpentine lines. The Longest Ride.
Latte Art. Barista Mistakes.
A slaughterhouse in floodlight, cow body next to cow body at Amarillo Quality Beef.
Lucie Stahl, 2018
(...) „Consumer stuff and waste attracts me. These types of works of mine, the pieces that are dealing with consumer culture, aren’t just rejective, not meant as a simple critique, which might be a common misunderstanding. To me they are more than that, they’re also an embracement, a joke. I am a part of that culture. I have a strong attraction toward these things.“ (...)
„I want to introduce something that is unpredictable. At first sight my works might appear to be these shiny, perfect objects, these entities. That’s why I build in these slightly undermining mechanisms that function in different ways: the reflectiveness of the epoxy resin, the holes piercing the works (see the works on the Berlin Biennale 2016). It is on purpose that I don’t mold the resin perfectly, that it includes occasional air bubbles, dust, hair, a small fly, or whatever. The surface isn’t super smooth and flat but rather wobbly, though it’s important to me that it remains reflective. You can’t look at my work without noticing its environment.“ (...)
„This “back-to-farming” pioneer culture positivism really speaks to me.
When I first visited Dallas, I went to Heritage Village, an outdoor museum, a sort of ghost village with nineteenth century pioneer and Victorian houses. I was mostly drawn to a little farm, where this guy with a long white beard was reenacting life how it might have been back then. He was repairing a chair; there were chickens and sheep. Right behind the farm was the chain-link fence that limits the museum space. Behind it is a small strip of grass after which the freeway starts, and this small grassy patch is used by homeless people as a living site. In the museum there was of course no acknowledgement of the people living right behind the fence either; they seemed to be invisible. It was such a bizarre clash of narratives: the massive land dedicated to preserving the Texan success story with all the beautiful dream houses, and the tent city right behind the fence. The absurdity of these opposites amazed me, the way reality spilled into the museum space.“ (...)
Excerpts from the interview Lucie Stahl - Stag Nation at dépendance, with Tenzing Barshee, Mousse Magazine, 2017
The Simple Life
6 June – 28 July 2018
Turbid masses, black oil. An offshore drilling platform.
A kind of recluse, dropout - a put-on „Walden-hairstyle" transforms a mannequin.
Hillbilly elegy.
View through a milky window / on barn / house / sunset. The own life plan checking -
My house. My car. My ground.
Regionalism - The Simple Life, or what is regarded as such. New Artisan, Nostalgia Ultra.
A wagon carries us through the night in serpentine lines. The Longest Ride.
Latte Art. Barista Mistakes.
A slaughterhouse in floodlight, cow body next to cow body at Amarillo Quality Beef.
Lucie Stahl, 2018
(...) „Consumer stuff and waste attracts me. These types of works of mine, the pieces that are dealing with consumer culture, aren’t just rejective, not meant as a simple critique, which might be a common misunderstanding. To me they are more than that, they’re also an embracement, a joke. I am a part of that culture. I have a strong attraction toward these things.“ (...)
„I want to introduce something that is unpredictable. At first sight my works might appear to be these shiny, perfect objects, these entities. That’s why I build in these slightly undermining mechanisms that function in different ways: the reflectiveness of the epoxy resin, the holes piercing the works (see the works on the Berlin Biennale 2016). It is on purpose that I don’t mold the resin perfectly, that it includes occasional air bubbles, dust, hair, a small fly, or whatever. The surface isn’t super smooth and flat but rather wobbly, though it’s important to me that it remains reflective. You can’t look at my work without noticing its environment.“ (...)
„This “back-to-farming” pioneer culture positivism really speaks to me.
When I first visited Dallas, I went to Heritage Village, an outdoor museum, a sort of ghost village with nineteenth century pioneer and Victorian houses. I was mostly drawn to a little farm, where this guy with a long white beard was reenacting life how it might have been back then. He was repairing a chair; there were chickens and sheep. Right behind the farm was the chain-link fence that limits the museum space. Behind it is a small strip of grass after which the freeway starts, and this small grassy patch is used by homeless people as a living site. In the museum there was of course no acknowledgement of the people living right behind the fence either; they seemed to be invisible. It was such a bizarre clash of narratives: the massive land dedicated to preserving the Texan success story with all the beautiful dream houses, and the tent city right behind the fence. The absurdity of these opposites amazed me, the way reality spilled into the museum space.“ (...)
Excerpts from the interview Lucie Stahl - Stag Nation at dépendance, with Tenzing Barshee, Mousse Magazine, 2017