Madeleine Roger-Lacan
Lay down with me
Galerie EIGEN + ART Berlin
11 January – 24 February 2024
Opening: Thursday, 11 January, 5 - 8pm
Film & Edit: Paul Ott / Music: Mono Ono - Piano Piano, ERPS - Rota
English with German subtitles
It is dark. We need to find a way out, to get a clue how to use these stupid daily objects surrounding us, or at least how to avoid the stink of all these frailing flowers. Certain dangers are involved, some spooky creatures hiding in the corners. Stress holes up and somehow also pleasure. Was Rapunzel the first escape room player? She found the answer in her body. One should learn from her.
Can someone really escape this room? Past experience proves otherwise. Whatever awaits outside is not that different after all. Fear of violence is everywhere. We are stuck in a limbo, this eerie non-place between desire and regret. The body is lying down, sometimes supine, sometimes lateral. The soul is leaving it, taking a quick turn over all that it has been through, just before it decides where to go.
Something here is cheesy, yet seductive, stimulating blood veins, arousing the body, twisting it, dehumanizing it. Is it a horror movie or a rom-com? It’s as if a drunk film editor enjoyed the freedom to follow her childish urges. She was cutting and pasting brutally, sometimes in a whimsical manner, often with great anger. Like a butcher with an Andalusian dog barking around the slaughterhouse, slashing the flesh and sewing it with meat. The painting became an event, and the event is tonight. Do not miss it. Do not miss them — longing is a very long process. Like a shoelace knot, impossible to undo.
The blue sky is full of stars (and zeppelins). Which one of them represents death? Is it the big bear, the small pot or that annoying black cat that returns to our bed again and again? What does it have to announce? Some superstitions suggest spitting when it crosses our path. They also suggest not breaking mirrors and to avoid tucking thumbs inside of a cemetery. We might be in trouble. Are we doomed to burn down in hell or to burn out at work? Obsessive thoughts can carve a hole in the wall. The queen is dead, long live the queen! She must be dethroned though from her very dramatic crown. After all, we want to rest in peace, in one piece, at least for eight hours a night.
Noam Alon