Bend Down Boutique – non spaces
Vernissage
10th October 2015
Laudatio
Dr. Renee Gadsden
Exhibition till 28 October 2015
ART TALKS and Video Installation: 15. 10. 2015 at 7pm
Dr. Renée Gadsden and Christof Habres
Catalogue presentation: 20.10.2015 at 7pm
with Lucas Gehrmann (Kunsthalle Wien)
IMERSTEN GALLERY
Sonnenfelsgasse 3
1010 Vienna
Chronicler of a disintegrating world
Pauline Marcelle’s works remind one of a chronicle of contemporary affairs. During her diverse journeys, the attentive and intelligent observer Marcelle detects themes and events, which she first conceptually ponders over and then integrates into her inventive, artistic activity. During this creative process she employs a variety of media – photography, video, drawing, sculpture and painting. The present catalogue conveys a penetrating insight into the varied blocks of recent work by Pauline Marcelle. The viewer can thereby follow very precisely the major themes with which the artist has dealt in past years: for example, the pollution of the sea that she has experienced along the African coast or the social problems in developing countries which she documents with her Bend Down Boutique images. Yet she also holds up a mirror to the first world countries, when she artistically chronicles on many levels the frenzied lifestyle and/or gigantic architecture of global metropolitan cities.
The unique aspect of Pauline Marcelle’s work is, without doubt, the fact that although she indeed possesses a particular feeling and a deep sensibility for social and political themes, in her art she never admonishes with finger-wagging. On the contrary: in general, her works communicate by means of an utterly genuine, memorable, aesthetic sense. An aesthetic that understands how to arouse the interest of the viewer, and which allows him/her to approach more closely. And at second glance, one recognizes just what is going on behind the scenes in Marcelle’s works. From close up, one sees the “critical” set pieces, which constitute her works – the rubbish, the textiles, the anonymity of the megacities or social wrongs.
For these reasons, Pauline Marcelle’s catalogue Bend Down Boutique – with insightful and interesting textual contributions by Dr. Renée Gadsden, Blake Daniels and Lucas Gehrmann – depicts a fascinating and multivalent artistic involvement with the incidents and tendencies of world events. Christof Habres