DOUBLE U: Super A

GALERIE DROSTE

18 RUE DUSSOUBS

75002 PARIS

 

With his paintings and sculptures, Stefan Thelen, better known as Super A, moves along the sometimes fine line between fact and fiction and, as part of the "Trapped" series, explores the reality behind the imaginative icons of pop culture by penetrating to their core in a certain way; Tweety, Snow White and Co. disintegrate into a spiral of colorful ribbons and reveal their naturalistic models. The deconstruction of the easily digestible cartoons makes us realize that we often let a transfigured gaze wander over the usually more complicated circumstances of reality.

 

In the surrealist tradition, Thelen provokes us with the alienation of assumed facts, dissects well-known cartoon characters and lets us discover the less playful origins behind these myths that have meanwhile become truth, whose naive lightness shapes our culture - the "ideal world smile" of Mickey Mouse or Ronald McDonald is thus shaken by the hairy face of a lifelike mouse or a sad Pierrot. But it is not only in the world of film that we allow ourselves to be guided by cherished notions: "Nowadays, the most dominant myths that we have grasped like a warm blanket of truth are freedom, property, and individualism. We tend to think of these as absolute objective truths [...]." Thelen questions whether we are not trapped in this cozy reality and whether, despite the coziness, we should dare to break out of it. Thelen leaves it open how we are to read his works, as encouragement to drop the covers or to actively participate in the construction of a façade surrounded by specific attributes, as he has also created himself in the approach with his alias Super A.

 

Text by Arne Zyprian