Liane Lang - Fallen

About

Liane Lang's photography and sculpture engage in a dialogue of mutual intervention and intrigue. Her life-like mannequins are deployed mischievously at the Memento Statue Park outside Budapest, where we see them at play with themes both formal and ideological in content. Amidst redundant Soviet bronze statues, Lang weaves scenes of political satire-with-witty-moments-of-reverie. Exploring the purely sculptural side of her practice for this exhibition, Lang is creating a series of miniatures of broken & disfigured statues of Dictators. The booted legs of the statue of the Shah of Persia, for example, appear alone, as a compelling fragment. We live in an era of rapidly collapsing regimes with their instantly broadcast traumas and triumphs, but Lang's exploration of public statuary of the recent and more distant past, evokes the distilled response of Shelley's resonant poem Ozymandias: ‘Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'