Gaffe

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Gaffe, 1991

Project: Kunst auf Zeit / Gruppe 77

In this work, the billboard, a public medium, has been confronted with its own slogan-like and simplifying means. The seeming intimacy of oversized pictures has been replaced by the small, secret, personal intimacy of privacy. The onlooker, a victim of advertising, which imposes a sexually and sensually stimulating sight in the form of an intrusive and obtrusive gaze, is made aware of voyeurism.

The work appears in a quite different light in a museum or exhibition hall. In this context, “gazing” is devoid of the embarrassment of “voyeurism”. The onlooker pays the price for the legitimacy, for crossing the border of intimacy. Social reality has become artificiality.

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