Andrea Loefke Viewer Participation
Brooklyn-Based German Artist Discusses Her Work and Practice
German born artist Andrea Loefke lives and works in Brooklyn, New York, constructing conglomerates of material and form, working from innumerable materials, both decorative and everyday. These supplies overflow from the categorized shelves and bins of her studio. In fabricating these often vivid multiform assemblages, Loefke employs a myriad of techniques expressing ambiguous thoughts and sensations. These fairy-like worlds are complex structures incorporating multiple objects, colours and textures, resulting in what could be described as playful and mysterious landscapes, enticing the viewer into visual narrative journeys.
Part Seven (concluding)
AL: In this piece, [“The squirrels, hedgehogs and rabbits are indeed harmless…” ] the visitor has a double role: he or she is a participant and performer with a subjective experience within the piece and then at the same time - is placed outside of this creation in an objective position, like witnessing a performance in a theatre. Micro and macro elements enhance this double role.
The deerstand has a size that visitors can relate to and that comes out of our world, as do the binoculars. Where as the surrounding environment plays a lot with scale. Here one finds miniature parts, next to small, next to familiar/regular sized or even enlarged elements. A magazine cut out of a deer, greatly reduced in size, hides behind a regular sized picture frame with a drawing. Egg cartons and spray-foam develops into enormous chestnuts and a miniature ladder leads up to an average sized hook with small drawings of forest animals, dangling from it.
Parts in this installation invite the visitor to participate because one can relate in size and feels comfortably familiar. Other miniature elements preclude and one becomes more of a beholder, standing outside of it, like watching a movie. And after all, the visitor brings his or her own body and size to this “universe”.
PB: I am also interested in the relationships between the seemingly more disparate elements in this installation - Drawings, photographs, painterly environments, magazine cut outs, text, and diminutive objects – have you employed a conscious and 'anthologised' collective of narrative components within this internal element of the work; a form within a form – or conversely; a 'free-form' puzzle for the viewer to construct subjectively?
AL: All these bits and pieces arranged on fields of green color continue as a composed collection of narrative components but rather like a puzzle for the viewer to put together subjectively. At this point my work in the studio was mainly collecting, archiving and doodling. For a very long time I was just going through magazines, scavenging through stores and my own bins and shelves, and doodling on paper. I was reading stories, collecting words and sentences and making small objects inspired by materials and found commodities.
A general theme was of course underlying this work and the more time I spent with it, the further an idea developed – very generally speaking: maybe a “blithe” and enchanted version of a serious topic – nature? The idea was to create a canvas with a loose narrative that is meant to be found and collected. The participant can follow the traces, the marks I have laid out and weave his or her own story. After all, the idea of the deerstand ties in with the surrounding environment – it is all about discovery – unfolding and inventing.
Back to part six
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