It is still light in Lichtenberg on this Wednesday evening, between the construction fence, the wasteland and the Lidl supermarket. Across the street, in the foyer of Villa Heike, it is dark. Something seems to be waiting behind the open door. A fitting start for the new exhibition at the Kleine Humboldt Galerie. Because that is what it is about: the things you encounter in the dark. Seven young artists are addressing the old question: What is a monster?
The monstrous often embodies marginalized aspects that a society tries to rid itself of because they threaten to upset its self-image. Even in Freud’s work, the uncanny is the well-known and repressed, that which lies in the dark. It is a concept that invites subversion. At second glance, Theresa Rothe’s “Man-Dog-Swine” is not the crouching figure that one thinks one can see in the darkness of the foyer.
This creature looks almost sweet. It reminds us of the stuffed animals of childhood. But the childlike familiarity quickly gives way to the disgust that bald, warty patches and a rotating, naked tail trigger. “Mandogpig” is an apt first work in an exhibition that attempts to approach social fears with the help of monsters: it oscillates between familiarity and uncertainty.
Play with the uncannily familiar
The play with the uncannily familiar runs through the exhibition: Daniel Dobarco paints comic-like monsters of childhood. Ogres, elves, trolls, they cry, bleed and fall. The burden of being a monster is heavy. Marina Pohl’s “Susanna” refers to the biblical story of Susanna in the bath. Unlike in traditional depictions, we see a young woman kneeling on the floor with her back to the viewer. Two shadowy figures approach in the background. In its oppressiveness, the image does justice to the monstrosity of the story. Susanna’s fear is visible instead of her bare breast. A response to the double voyeurism of past depictions.
But not all monsters are so present. Some of them remain in the dark for the time being: With “no_clip”, Anny Listmeier leaves the exploration of the darkness to the viewer. Her video takes us through surreal, oppressive spaces. Inevitably, the viewer, in his disorientation, begins to project his own fears. He creates his own monster.
The fear of the living
Moran Sanderovich’s nameless sculpture references human physicality and yet transcends it. It shows a human beetle with wires sprouting from its ears and nose. The fine cracks and wrinkles, the down on the face, appear lifelike. It almost seems as if the silicone body is sweating. You catch yourself with the feeling of looking down on something that was just alive.
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Aline Schwörer also creates a breathing ecosystem with works that seem to grow out of the walls and sprout from the ground. “Torsion”, a fountain like a tumor from which black water wells up, almost seems to pulsate. These are contributions that raise questions: What is organic here, what is artificial? Does it matter what moves, what breathes, what lives?
It is precisely these questions that the last contribution to the exhibition is devoted to: For “Return of the Teratoma”, Lyndsey Walsh has grown teratomas – organ-like cancerous tumors with hair and teeth created from stem cells. What has always occurred naturally in humans can now also be created in the laboratory for research purposes. In Walsh’s horror film, which is running in the exhibition, the monstrous teratoma now exists independently of its original biological origin – and haunts the people from whom it now exists detached.
All of these works irritate, disorient and instill fear. They raise the question of what it means to live. The answer to this lies in the dark.