The day I killed Elvis (2020)
This work is the fruit of the desire to create a demultiplied representation of the infinitely repeated real without any figure ever losing its identity, each motif here being at the same time macro and/or micro, a universe in itself and another universe… Appropriating the new dimensions of the world: a world that has lost its centre, a world that replicates, clones, multiplies, decomposes and recomposes constantly… by using the fractal system, we move from geometric form to figurative form, like a grandmother’s embroidery, fabric or African hairstyles…
And then there is, in this principle of repetition and rediscovering, the idea of insistence and exhaustion: – The machine is in motion, always in motion to constantly stimulate the thought “I’m not going to repeat it to you”. 100 times! »… A form of penitence, of psalmody… To accumulate is also to contaminate, to suffocate… The eye of the beholder, trapped by an invasive obsession…
Repetition does not change anything in the object that repeats itself, but it changes something in the mind that contemplates it.
Borrowing from Andy Warhol (who borrowed and repeated a large number of images himself) and the aggressive posture of his Elvis (1963), Peter M, Mayer photographs me in turn, I will in turn appropriate to manipulate and transform in order to recover a stolen story.
This is a way of pointing out that the commercial exploitation of black music has incorporated specific signs of “blackness” than the black people themselves.
Elvis Presley took part in this commercial exploitation of blackness via the cultural industries, which benefited not so much blacks as it did whites, who performed certain traits considered characteristic of black identity and contributed to a de-racialisation of blackness.
As early as the 1950s, this mechanism of appropriation of certain black traits considered classically characteristic by the white cultural industries contributed to the ousting mostly of those who were the bearers of such signs . and the same goes for the real story of the cowboy : If, in the collective imagination, the cowboy is the ‘purebred’ American, the perfect WASP, a free and upright man, the truth is different in several respects.
In fact, the low attractiveness of the job does not encourage white people to take a job which effectively is that of a simple agricultural worker with dirty, dangerous and demeaning tasks. As a result, and contrary to the received ideas peddled by myth, cowboys are people of colour 5 who are victims of the Jim Crow laws which codify their racial segregation and prevent them from being associated with the emblematic figure of the cowboy of the Conquest of the West: Blacks, Mexicans, Metis, Indians, etc. The truth is different in several ways.
Finally, here, on closer inspection in “the day I killed Elvis”, each motif becomes a cogwheel, each little cogwheel becoming the essential part of the whole. It is a question of making movement itself a work, without representation; of inventing vibrations, rotations, twists, gravitations or dances that directly reach the mind.
“The day I killed Elvis” plays with the idea of hybridization, of mise en abyme and illusion as so many possible passages to elsewhere (next door, over there, further away, higher up…), a step, a path, a process of transformation in progress.
The corporate collection of the EVN AG
The corporate collection of the EVN AG was established in 1995. It is a collection of international, contemporary art and offers the opportunity to communicate critical and current positions. The art works are selected by a team of experts commissioned by the company (Brigitte Huck, Heike Maier-Rieper, Hans-Ulrich Obrist, Markus Schinwald, Thomas D. Trummer) and are seen as an intellectual and material investment. International thinking, quality awareness and innovation link the collection to the company’s mission statement. The collection is an integral part of the corporate culture and it shapes the perception of the EVN employees as well as of their clients. The “Wallpaper” project has been realised since 2018. Wallpapers designed by artists and created especially for the EVN collection will be temporarily hung. In combination with works from the collection, an interplay of workplace, architecture and contemporary art can be experienced. In the first half of 2021, for the first time Wallpaper #4 will feature works and wallpapers by Sasha Auerbakh, Bar du Bois, Gottfried Bechtold, Chto Delat, Angus Fairhurst, Dr Galentin Gatev, Marcus Geiger, Suboth Gupta, Little Warsaw, Alois Mosbacher, Elaine Reichek, Rosa Rendl, Gerwald Rockenschaub, Marianna Simnett, Jasper Spicero & Bunny Rogers, Elisabeth B. Tambwe and Maja Vukoje.
wallpaper; digital print with a digitally edited photo as original source
dimensions variable
2020
Commission 2020
Inv. No. WP_19
Expositions
Wallpaper #4, evn sammlung, Maria Enzersdorf, 2021
Publications
Wallpaper #4, Vienna 2021, p. 3, 7–13 (s. p.)
