Surface Glaze

One after the other, a series of legs, knees, necks, mouths, hands and other human body parts appear on the screen, forming a surreal corporeal landscape. The viewer expects that the fragments will come together to form a coherent image of a whole body, yet they remain strangely abstract, resembling individual objects. After a few moments, an opaque, slow flowing fluid floods the individual sections of the body, gradually covering every surface with a disconcerting reflective gloss. Extreme closeup slow motion footage reveals a double-edged process of transformation: on the one hand, the vast liquid mass, which resembles nail polish or other fluid makeup, conceals wrinkles, red blotches, body hair and impurities under a smooth, shiny surface. On the other hand, all individual properties are slowly masked and covered over. The supposedly beautiful, smooth and shining surfaces are juxtaposed to the destructive and threatening envelopment of the body parts in the fluid.

In Surface Glaze, Lotte Meret Effinger creates images which bear a superficial resemblance to the aesthetic of commercial advertisements. Yet she also subtly draws attention to the ambivalent and destructive nature of consumer society, in which individuals find themselves constantly caught between an apparently emancipated identity and the influence of consumer culture. The visual optimization of adverts is adopted, intensified, and finally called into question. The apparently beautiful glaze begins to resemble as a sticky mass that covers over everything and penetrates into the body, transforming and occupying it. (Joana da Silva Düring)

* We can only show an excerpt of this work in the online archive. For the complete version, please contact the artist.