Press Release

Wedding

Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery is pleased to present ‘Wedding’ an exhibition by Gotscho.

Situated at the confluence of memory, allusion and language Gotscho’s work is always composed of items from daily life and their relation to the body. Echoing surrealism and conceptual art Gotscho harnesses the worlds of design, couture, theatre and sculpture. In Wedding Gotscho offers a series of characteristically disconcerting hybrids. By carefully intertwining domestic furnishings and clothes he marks the interplay between the social and the psychic. Unsettling the formal logic of objects as well as their readymadeness he produces macabrely humorous aberrations which testify to the power of appearances.

Gotscho evokes an ambiguous critique of, and ambivalence toward, commodity fetishism. Implicit in the work is the way these objects of desire define who we are, ultimately constituting cultural identity itself. In Gotscho’s pieces outward projects of desire are problematically indexed to consumer culture: the work seduces the viewer into identification yet stops short of pleasure. It is not incidental that most of the objects he manipulates are solicited from companies and manufacturers as donations. The list of contributors is both glamorous and telling, agnès b., Christian Lacroix, Baccarat, Wilmotte, Gianfranco Ferré, Opéra-Comique de Paris, Tati, Kleinfeld’s, Zeller Tuxedos….

Through a strategy of dislocation and displacement, Gotscho’s art bears witness to a wealth of associative histories. A body-builder obsessively challenging the limits of his own flesh whilst continuously depicting the Boyd as an absence at the heart of the work. He has, among other things, eviscerated jackets - (their linings hanging sadly to the ground), held feminine gowns captive in furniture with upholstery buttons, wrapped a Lacroix dress around a vase, reconfigured the unity of the couple by fusing and stitching bridal gowns and tuxedos, created row upon silent row of folded shirts atop crystal vases doubling as funerary urns, enacted one of many sadomasochistic fantasises by stretching a black latex dress around the seat and back of a chair…

Gotscho is a Paris based artist who has exhibited at the Grey Art Gallery in 1992, at Prospekt 93 in Frankfurt and at the latest Apart section of the Venice Biennale.