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2004
drawing:installation, mixed media on paper and aluminum
2 × 8 m
loop, room for contemporary art, Berlin, DE
The exhibition no risk no glory sought to focus on the byproducts of the artist’s practice, presenting an assembly of works that would otherwise probably be discarded. cathode narcissus defies this conception, which implies belief in the poetic character of margins and remainders, embarking on a narcissistic self-reflection to approach a center and mythical origin of artistic work. The material for the installation consists of self-portraits, interspersed with moiré patterns, reflective silver foil, and silver bronze, which, used as an additional color, stands for radiance and the reflection in the mirror. The self-portraits, most of which are based on photographs, are installed along a horizontal axis that operates as an axis of reflection. The portraits in the upper half are upright, while most in the bottom half have been rotated by 180°. The arrangement largely avoids exact mirror symmetries between the upper and lower series. Although each of the photographic motifs recurs in various drawings and although the central motif of the work, the ‘self,’ is identical throughout, mirror reflection as a compositional principle organizes only the relationship between the two halves of the installation as a whole. The derealization imposed on the bottom half by the dominant top-down inversion of the sheets is disrupted by several sheets showing the subject performing a handstand, which are mounted in the same way, with the head pointing down, in both series. Realized mostly on transparent paper, the drawings lent themselves to frequent superimpositions. The compositional vertical reflection symmetry, which subjects the pictorial contents to the unity of the installation and molds the materially separate drawings into an imaginary spatial continuum, is opened up toward the space of the beholder by the horizontal reflection in the sheets of aluminum foil.
The work was created in Florence during a fellowship residency at Villa Romana. The villa, which was bought by Max Klinger, is situated in a large garden on a hillside above the city; since the early twentieth century, it has served as a study domicile for young artists. With its staged self-interrogation of the artist’s ego, cathode narcissus makes reference to this dreamlike situation over which the past looms large—not only that of Florence as the museum of the Quattrocento but, even more powerfully, that of the Villa Romana.