Fruit Cake 28

“Blickachsen 10” is showing two works by Joana Vasconcelos, who represented Portugal at the Venice Biennale in 2013 after causing a sensation the year before with her exhibition at the palace of Versailles. Her monumental, lightly ironical works often deal with questions of cultural and role-specific identity. Vasconcelos uses the forms and materials of everyday objects in strange and richly playful combinations. Thus her gigantic, garishly coloured “Fruit Cake” is created from a steel frame onto which plastic sand moulds (in the form of pretzels, apples, pears and strawberries) have been mounted. Whereas normally a single mould will playfully form a sand cake,here the moulds together form the shell of a colourful giant cupcake referencing the superficial allure of consumer goods. “Pavillon de Thé” on the other hand, a more than five metre-high wrought iron teapot, recalls historical garden pavillions, while the domestic use of the object is denied by its huge size. Through this highly original playing with form and materiality, and with historical and cultural references, Vasconcelos as if kidnaps the observer into a world that is only deceptively familiar.