48.1 (2024)

The large-format print on PVC mesh fabric on the outside of the bear enclosure acts like a negative window: a perforated membrane, a disruptive field between inside and outside. What initially appears to be a surface proves to be permeable and dissolves as one approaches it. In reference to Eichmaß des Guten und des Bösen (Yardstick of Good and Evil) inside the left cage, the work addresses states of dissociative perception – caused by trauma or sedation, which can also lead to states of alienation from the world and the self, in which the sense of self is disturbed.

Those affected experience their environment or themselves as unreal or alien, as if they were observing themselves from the outside – the view into, onto and through the image picks up on this dissolved relationship between self and outside. The portrait shows the artist's childlike eye – already blurred from a distance, it dissolves completely as one approaches. This effect is also reminiscent of perceptual distortions under the influence of psychotropic drugs: a detached access to the world, the body and the self. The placement of the external image also refers to the position of those whose voices and experiences are negotiated in the work inside the Bärenzwinger – to their invisibility and isolation, their existence as beings in a self-alienated world.