Anton Cotteleer

(Belgium) *1974 in Kapellen

Out of reach in the rotunda of the Kaiser-Wilhelms-Bad, a black-painted bathtub seems to balance on a stream of water apparently flowing out of it, opening out at the bottom into the elegant shape of a swan. “Prefab” is a characteristic work by Anton Cotteleer, an artist who sets his sights on everyday household objects in order to manipulate them, stripping them of their familiar context. In “Blickachsen 10”, this work stands in an evident dialogue with its location – and in the process it is taken from its context in the private sphere, into the public domain. One of Cotteleer’s strange, disconcerting groups of figures has been placed on a meadow in the Kurpark. In its high-visibility orange, “Shepherd’s son” can be seen glowing from afar: a fallen human body is pushing himself up, his leg and head have been severed, but he is holding tightly onto a jug, while a small dog seems to be looking around for help. Cotteleer’s human figures play with our perceptual conventions: often without head or a limb, it is as if these monochrome bodies were ancient archaeological finds – yet their material, their loud colour and their clothes plainly identify them as contemporary.

Exhibits

Blickachsen 10