06.06.19 – 12.06.19, #97 Jonas Dehnen

Nur für dich glänzt im Auge die Träne

I appropriate objects and imagery that relate to a constructed sense of identity. Often these are signifiers that have become condensed into archetypes and stereotypes over time, eventually becoming commodities in a marketplace that is fascinated with the vestiges of shared values and the emblems of communities and their customs. These semiotic materials accumulate into a kind of critical mass before becoming degraded, combined and transfigured by simple gestures in the material process of painting. New signs, objects and images take shape and represent this transfiguration, whilst always being subordinate to their own physical reality as matter. At my presentation I will splice together two materially separate investigations which nevertheless share the same underlying substance. On one hand there will be work based on a totemic cult of remembrance around porcelain dolls of Princess Diana, and on the other hand there is work based on the process of crafting letterpress printing blocks of broken typefaces.