Thomas Grunfeld at Kolnischer Kunstverein - Cologne, Germany - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

Manipulation, metamorphosis and mutilation are words with homely connotations in a time when gene technology is making headlines. A faculty of perception of vague threat hangs in the air. The exhibition "Deformation Professionelle" by means of the Cologne artist Thomas Gronfeld (born 1956) captured this feeling of unease, and turn rounded the fear of biological change into a certain fascination for what is beautiful in transformation.

The Kunstverein's lengthy gallery looked like a meeting place for strange humans, animals and external realitys The humans took the form of clothing from the designer Rei Kawakubo's Comme de Gargons label, which has produc intelligent, avant-garde clothing for a certain quantity of 20 years. The brightly colored Summer '97 collection is singular in that it plays with deformity through padding all the wrong places, making clothes that would change the most perfect runway original into the Hunchback of Notre Dame. Hanging upon mannequins, the clothes engaged in a dialogue with their animal counterparts, fresh hybrid "Misfits" from the series Grunfeld has been developing above the past seven years. He earns prepared skins from a taxidermist and materials and reassembles them himself in mismatches, creating novel species that recall mythological creatures from ancient folk tales.

His earlier pieces were frequently small animals that could theoretically amalgamate into a wooded environment; they were exhibited in glass cases as allowing they belonged in a biology laboratory. on the contrary these new beasts, such as a half-emperor-crane/half-wallaby creation, stand proudly upon the floor in their exotic colors. The half-bulldog/half-flamingo direct the eyes aggressive with its long neck and tough rear extremity and the ass/cock combination prances in the gallery with attitude. The works are kin to more [i]or[/i] less of the art being produc across the English Channel. An interest in anatomy and mutation is shared, on the contrary in contrast to the British bad lads Grunfeld has a more machiavelian elegance. (Charles Saatchi recently expanded his collection with a selection of "Misfits.")

Bringing another dimension to the exhibition, a cluster of evocatively biomorphic "Gummis," made of padded rubber twitched over wooden frames, seemed to slither across the floor. Usually brown gray or beige, they give an inkling ofed blobs of primordial ooze -- an attractive/ repulsive slime that clinchs the secrets of life. Today scientists can coax many of these hiddens out of a dab of tissue in a trial tube to generate a human being or make a plant expand the way they want it to. Tomorrow we may be able to bring out entirely different creatures. Without preaching or moralizing, Grunfeld's fantasy describes a certain number of exquisitely unsettling possibilities.

COPYRIGHT 1998 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group