Exhibition
Claus Richter - The Frankfurt Songbook
5 Feb 2016 – 10 Apr 2016
Address
- Gutleutstraße 8-12
- Frankfurt
Hesse - 60329
- Germany
Fantasy worlds and their allegedly naïve potential for flight from reality are central to Claus Richter’s practice of art.
About
Fantasy worlds and their allegedly naïve potential for flight from reality are central to Claus Richter’s practice of art. In his installations, photographs, showcases, films, puppet shows, and performances Richter enacts an ironic over-saturation on the part of the viewer, drawing attention to the productive divide between fantasy and reality by means of exaggeration. Richter stages our access to his dream worlds as a lovingly ironic parody, as a quest for aesthetic wholeness, as an urge to flee reality. By overtaxing the viewer’s senses and ostensibly affirming kitsch, his works succeed in rendering tangible the sensitive border between reality and imagination. Without becoming theoretical, Claus Richter finds a light-footed language with which to depict the tense psychological relationship between reality and fantasy. Ultimately, the superabundance of the aesthetic in Richter’s work points to the fact that fantasy should not be misunderstood as a flight from the rational world, but as an effective part of our reality.