LOVE SHOW
14 February - 3 March, 2023
“We do not have to love, we choose to love”, this quote from bell hooks is a beautiful approach to thinking about love. But it's not just about choosing to love, but also about choosing a type of love. Because there are plenty! There is romantic love, but also the love of fans, the love for kitsch, as well as unrequited love, or other downsides of love. And of course, and above all, the love of art, which Hotel Tiger celebrates in the Love show. A performative intervention especially for the opening is the work of Maria Krol. In “ljubav, jebem ti maiku” she deals with love spells and potions, which are ingrained in the history of humanity. Usually, such recipes involve making your object of desire ingest something that will evoke reciprocating feelings. Nowadays there seems to be a shift. Often we are heartbroken, seek for the complete annihilation of feelings. It is not about the object, but about the subject, about us. We don't wish for magic turns in another person but in ourselves. We wish for indifference, not caring, apathy and so on and so forth. In her work she wants to fulfil that wish by ingesting cakes and sweets with the desired lack of feeling written on them, it works as a (de-)love spell.
Cordula Schieri takes the off ramp to look at relationships and the rituals surrounding them. One of these customs is for the groom to carry the bride over the doorstep of their home after
the wedding. It’s an old superstition that evil spirits hide under the threshold. In her drawings, Schieri reinterprets the custom. Instead of a groom carrying his newlywed over a threshold into a new stage of life, she offers the image of a ramp. Through this, Schieri detaches the custom from heteronormative binarity and includes different forms of connections. Because relationships, no matter in which constellation, are always coupled through different steps, stages, and transitions. Another form of love is the love of fans for their idol. At first glance, it may seem tragic since this love usually remains unrequited. But it is precisely the unattainability of the idol that makes the charm of this obsession. Through
the adoration, objects owned by the idol, so called memorabilia, become charged. Just like the drape that hung on Elvis Presley's Honeymoon ranch. It is this charge that Mitchell Anderson makes use of for his piece “The charge of a Star!” he takes the object and transfers it into the art context. The narrative attached to the object thus functions as an additional medium. The insanity of being in love is also the theme of Iouri Podladtchikov's drawing. In a jotted script, the artist writes the phrase “in Love.” With each line the letters become more blurred, the sentence deconstructs itself, the letters become scrawly, almost graphic. Reminiscent perhaps even of the visualization of the heart beat. The reference to a medical phenomenon is fitting since infatuation can also be felt very bodily, often through nervousness, racing heart, loss of appetite or other physical symptoms. Jason Rohr’s work is titled "Sick of My Heart Being Broken”. On the heart shaped, raw canvas, there lays a couple on a meadow on a sunny day, wonkily painted like a child's drawing. A happy couple scene, sweeter than sugar, the postmodern relationship ideal. But the heart is broken, held together with two stickers. With his painting Rohr questions the human condition: Do we long for a long gone past? Or for ideals that never existed in the first place? Do we try to patch up our disappointments with cute stickers?
Yixin Yuan's work expands the exhibition space into the outdoors. Using a spotlight, Yuan directs the viewer's gaze out of the apartment, in front of an apple is lit up. No other fruit is as culturally and historically charged as the apple. While in the christian context it stands for sin and temptation, other cultures read it as a positive symbol. In Judaism it is said to bring long life, in Chinese culture the apple is a lucky charm. With the installation outside the exhibition space, Yuan also poses the question of the inside and outside of the gaze. Ella Rocca is, once again, hopelessly in love. Time for them to confront their crushes. With reflective self-irony the director takes on unrequited desire and by mixing imagination and fact at their desktop, creates a surprising experience. Being in love is emotional hard work. Where to put all the infatuation, especially the unrequited one? Ella Rocca interviews the persons they are in love with, the internet and themselves, and samples the answers into a cinematic essay. Rocca is studying in the bachelor’s programme Video at Hochschule Luzern. Their short film “CRUSHED” is currently being screened at the 73th Berlinale.
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https://hoteltiger.ch
