BeachBabyBaker3000
2021
installation
Tanning Bed, Cyanotypes on Satin, Metal Chains, Led, Tanning Bed Equipment (Goggles, Lotion, Towel, Bikini), AR Filter via QR Code
Collaborative Project with Josepha Edbauer
“When Lights Close Their Tired Eyes”
AA Collections Gallery,
Vienna, AT
“ELEVATION”,
Kleine Humboldt Galerie, Berlin, DE
"Angewandte Festival"
curated by Brigitte Kowanz
Die Angewandte, Vienna, AT
supported by Paula Marschalek
In the exhibition when lights close their tired eyes by the two intermedia artists Josepha Edbauer and Hannah Neckel, the boarders between digital and analog space become blurred. The gallery space becomes a participatory installation setting, centrally staged the BeachBabyBaker3000: a solarium as a portal between one's own physicality and immaterial self-staging. Visitors are invited to sunbath on site and explore the screen-like surface with their own bodies.
The demarcated capsule creates a temporally individually fixed meditative pause within the gallery space - a moment of awareness between materiality and light - the essence of any space. The aesthetics of the entire setting draws on contemporary media representational subjects. The UV Rays on the human skin initiates a processual fusion between the individual and the installation. Space and matter are thus used to open up a reflection on one's own corporeality and representation in a processual way; the solarium becomes a "contentbaker".
In the picture series extraction, the solarium is used as a transmission medium to carry the bodily processes inside to the outside by using chemical exposure technology. The radiators in the room experience visual appreciation through their staging, while the warmth aspect of these physical objects is juxtaposed with the light-giving solarium.
The installation is extended by elements that can only be accessed through social media. The digital space is no less real, merely immaterial. In when lights close their tired eyes, the gallery becomes a place of longing for social interaction. Through filters that can be seen on Instagram, the solarium mood can be transferred to any location and thus create content for self-dramatization that is independent of location, while participants also receive digital visibility and the opportunity for social interaction. The filter can be accessed through the QR codes on the exterior facade.
Next to the BeachBabyBakers3000, the corresponding PinkPartyPalmtree3000 can be seen in the digital space. The palm tree as a motif embodies the longing for exoticism and paradise like no other plant in artistic discourse. As a classic, recurring subject within Central European cultural history, it is and has always been staged and negotiated anew. As an aesthetic and philosophical symbol in art production, it moves between colonialism and outmoded kitsch symbol. Here it now functions as a digital object that can be planted regardless of location and expresses white desires.
↑ exhibited at AA Collections Gallery, Photos by Maria Belova
↑ exhibited at Kleine Humboldt Galerie Berlin