Genau so und anders
Christina Paetsch
Whether found objects from everyday life, the world of botany, or the food industry, all are witnesses to our relationship with ourselves and with our environment. In her deliberately staged still-lifes Christina Paetsch grapples with processes of perception and the great questions of the post-industrial age at a social level, including consumer behaviour, ideas of beauty, overproduction, climate change, and globalisation.
The middle of the exhibition space is dominated by a tower of refrigerators that have all been filled with the likes of chocolate kisses and marshmallows, the sticky, sugary insides of which are slowly dripping out. While the absurd content of two videos – such as cakes showering – makes their Dadaistic origins clear, they also highlight one of the primary themes of Christina Paetsch’s work: the handling of resources. Across the walls the artist presents surrealistic photographic compositions engaged in the interplay between beauty and disgust, the natural and the artificial. These pieces, which seem to have sprung directly from the archetypal dimensions of the subconscious, captivate the viewer through their colourful plasticity.
Christina Paetsch works with photography, and at the same time sounds out the borders of the medium. Through a transformational process her individual shots of everyday objects are fashioned into fantastical, highly aesthetic still-life collages which would not be out of place in a glossy fashion or advertising magazine – were it not for their unsettling and bizarre elements, that is. Things are not what they seem.
photos © Gerhard Haug
