I am admittedly somewhat confused by Iris Schieferstein, and it is perhaps because of minor language issues or the simple fact that her work is absolutely bizarre. The latter also happens to be the reason that I like her.
I stumbled across her website (which is in German and roughly translated to English) after seeing pictures on google images of hoof high heels that she made (I was looking to see if A. McQueen's shoes would come up, or what else would... just a little insight into the weird ways I come across things...) I was intrigued so I ended up at her website.
It's difficult to figure exactly what she typically does, other than that it involves dead animals. On her website I found a menagerie of photographs and sculpture, both revolving around taxidermy. The image on the main page of her website is a Vincent Price-esque photograph of what I presume is the artist, standing over a severed sheep's head a and a glass of wine, wielding a pair of scissors. Again, not sure what to think. The description underneath makes her out to be some sort of Frankenstein, stating that she "...has worked with dead animals as raw material for her pieces of art. She joins the fragments together to new creatures and thus gives a new face to death. No matter, if her arrangements follow paintings of the great masters of art or if the joined objects turn out to be whole words - her work always gives evidence of aesthetic intutition and her inclination to subtle entertainment." -the last part of which can be seen in her taxidermy sculpture works which spell out words and phrases such as "life can be so nice" and "elvis". Her photographs (look at the series Fotoplastiken) would also suggest that she is possibly somewhat of a feminist.
If anyone knows more about her, definitely share!
Schieferstein's website
Breakthrough : show at HP Garcia Gallery NYC which is up until TOMORROW (sorry!)
images: iris-schieferstein.de & hpgarciagallery.com
No comments:
Post a Comment