STRAY AFFECTIONS

STRAY AFFECTIONS– Moritz Führer and Sophia Gatzkan

€1,99 is the price for the camouflage hunting cap in the Decathlon online store. Particularly lightweight. Suitable for all types of hunting. 100% polyester. For hunting, all you need besides the right equipment is the hunter and the prey. The fact that one of Moritz Führer's bulky concrete beasts is wearing the aforementioned hunting cap is just an ominous indication that we no longer inhabit a world that clearly differentiates the hunter from the hunted. What is presented to us here is a world of strays. As an outcast with no home or destination, the creature with the pumped-up legs plods along heavily. Individual glass fibre hairs are sitting in the folds of its swollen body unpleasantly emphasising its nakedness. The front leg is missing a piece of the solid concrete flesh, revealing its raw steel skeleton. Supported by a makeshift prosthesis made of pink thermoplastic, the creature arouses as much discomfort as it stirs pity. You want to turn away quickly, but you also want to look. Strangled by its own potency, fear and stress are inscribed in this body. It has become its own threat in a hunt that has degenerated into a metaphor. This hunt revolves around money, performance and personal growth – no less about bare survival. Next to it the clattering rattle of gleaming steel brackets is to be heard, as they interlock to form angular skeletons. Firmly bolted together, they flaunt their hardness and aggressiveness, but can barely stand on their feet without massive steel balls as a counterweight. Another reptiloid body, appearing to be an animal degenerated into a stool, bears the remnants of four plastic bottles clinging to it. These bottles, once used as sprues for the still-liquid concrete, have integrated with the body, just as geese with funnels in their mouths waiting for their own livers to become fatty. A body born to be fattened. An ego born to be inflated. From this grotesque introspection, Sophia Gatzkan redirects the focus outwards again. Her prosthetic body extensions rest neatly lined up on the wall like armours, waiting to be put on at the right moment. The sinister combat equipment appears to originate from a highly advanced manufacturing process. The knees and shoulders have been moulded from glass fibre and plastic to fit the body perfectly. Attached to the end of each mould are animal horns that are as beautiful as they are menacing. Symmetrical screw connections with thick brake disks are reminiscent of complicated fractures and the strangely exciting feeling of carrying metal in your body. The pain embedded within these objects is of a different kind. It is associated with iron pride and combativeness. Prostheses, commonly seen as spare parts balancing out a lack, now offer an advantage. While the ancient buck-legged Satyr was an outsider, neither human, nor animal, condemned to stray in the margins of society, this unclear classification has now become beneficial. Flaws serve as gateways to upgrades. A moment of hurting only preludes version 2.0. The exhibition Stray Affections deals with the signs of power and powerlessness on the battlefield of today's bodies, which have long been neither natural nor artificial. Sophia Gatzkan and Moritz Führer show mutated and tragic bodies that are in constant battle. Striving for high performance, your greatest enemy is the best version of yourself. It is the one that hunts you.

Helena Müller