LIZ CRAFT ME PRINCESS

2.7.–27.8.2023

The Kunsthaus is showing a major exhibition by the Californian artist Liz Craft (*1970), focusing on her work of the last ten years. Her sculptures and figurative installations appear to tell fragments of stories whose dreamy atmosphere can be associated with surrealism, fairy tales or drug hallucinations. She makes use of the reality that surrounds her, especially pop culture, which is filled by images from films (including westerns, B-movies or horror films), cartoons, theme parks, sceneries, kitsch, figures that have been quoted and condensed a thousand times, such as the witch, the unicorn, the biker, the pirate or death. Techniques and materials are assembled without hierarchy – fabric, plastic, glass, papier-mâché, synthetic resin, ceramics, bronze. Her uninhibited, seemingly naïve formal language includes scratching, impasto, exaggeration, covering or collage. The spatial staging allows the works to enter into a relationship with each other and moves somewhere between setting and narrative. Through the play of looks and language, the works are constantly redefined. The phylactery-like sculptures of the series Speech Bubbles, whose generic forms are reminiscent of comics or instant messages, seem to reflect conversations that the works have with each other – or stand for remarks that the visitors exchange in the exhibition space.

Curator: Paul-Aymar Mourgue d’Algue