Fünfter Frühling, 2024
Willehad Eilers, also known as Wayne Horse, has been thematically concerned for some time with the ambivalent wealth of Western society - the "wallowing of pigs in paradise", as Eilers says. "The wealth and material abundance of people today leave traces in their self-image". When there are no serious problems, when there is nothing left to wish for, it can’t get worse. What is left is the very own self-optimization and self-realization. But the range of what is offered as success or as a 'fulfilled life' is limited.
By looking at social media the bitter taste of the feeling that everyone enjoys a continual, everlasting vacation - a reckless moment – remains. Certainly, the viewer may approach the artist's scenes with humor and irony, for the cheerful exaggeration marks an elementary aspect of his works of art in order to break the spell between viewer and object and to initiate a dialogue.