24 Jan 2014

Gitte Schäfer: The Blackbird, A Piece In 5 Scenic Designs at KMD – Kunsthalle Marcel Duchamp

Simmental, 7 January 2014

Dear Caroline and Stefan,

The exhibition is called The Blackbird, a Piece in Five Scenic Designs. I'd like to fill each of the openings of KMD with a stage set. Found objects – a saucer, a place mat, lottery tickets, an ink drawing by my grandmother and a Dutch landscape woven into an embroidered picture by the stitches of a woollen thread – serve as the backdrop to a diorama with 'actors' additionally present or placed in front.

East: 1st Act – The Hunter
An idyllic blue-and-white landscape on the saucer of an English tea set: rural gentility, a hunter with his dog carrying in its mouth the pheasant that his master has shot. Blue and white symbolise good favour and friendship.

South: 2nd Act – Mistaken Identity
Detail of a cotton place mat, an intimated room, a bowl of lemons: in front of them a lantern made with a lightbulb and a cigarette holder. In Jewish culture the lemon symbolises the human heart, and in the Middle Ages it provided protection from witchcraft. Light-blue and yellow stand for the joy of life.

West: 3rd Act – Chance; or the Forces Inherent in Stone
A quartz crystal in front of Musikgesellschaft Erlenbach lottery tickets. The crystal contains all creative potential within itself. Pink stands for a delicate nature and purity of disposition.

North: 4th Act – The Windmill
A knitted Dutch landscape with a windmill, accompanied by a Christmas crib donkey as a performer. In Greek mythology, the ass is the companion of the God of immortal vitality. Violet stands for perseverance and resolve. Green symbolises nature, hope, immortality and happiness. The English word mill stems from the late Latin molina. The Ancient Greek mýllein meant to grind, press the lips together or, figuratively, sexual intercourse. The related myllós designated the female genitals.

The windmill, which symbolises the harvest of the fruits of human labour, is also a storehouse for seed and can represent the feminine or the mother in dreams.

Heavenwards: 5th Act – The Harvest
Rural peasant life in contre-jour: a fine, silhouette-like ink drawing by my grandmother Paula. Peasants shouldering their scythes and rakes return home from the fields.

The Blackbird, a Piece in Five Scenic Designs, is a visualised dream about the ambiguous metaphors in relations between things.

Kind regards
Gitte