Dream of a big exhibition. I had a huge and rather silly drawing (of a clown) and was very ashamed. Two girls performed on roller skates. That wasn‘t good either.

In the staging of this dream, a disco ball glittered over two ultimately charming roller-skaters, dancers with whom Breitenfellner had choreographed a series of movements. Above it all hung an elaborately realized oil-crayon drawing of a clown, grotesque and uncanny. Breitenfellner's installations of dreams about art are the paradoxical result of her fundamental distrustfulness regarding the production of art and exhibitions. The German "unheimlich" can refer both to a specific psychological phenomenon – a déjá-vue-ish feeling of recognizing a manifestation of one's unconscious in the "real" world – and to good old-fashioned creepiness. Breitenfellner unwittingly produced both reactions in her audience. Certain observers recognized her ironic self-effacement, others were puzzled and nervous. (Elizabeth Pusack)

In fact, the strangest thing is the artist's assessment of her dream, which she formulates in the title and which can be summed up as follows: the installation is a failure.
But isn't it the function of the visual arts today to leave us perplexed, not to reassure us in our tastes and expectations? Isn't it the role of the artist to destabilise us? This failed work is in fact a perfect success. The false banality of the objects in the dream is there to remind us that dreams are not always extraordinary, and that the uncanny has more to do with uncertainty than with the assurance provided by pretty things and diverting works.
(Frédéric Verry)



Material: Drawing made of oil pastels (300 x 240 cm), two dancers on roller-skates, 50 cm mirror-ball, pink wall-paint. Performers: Léa Lescure, Sarah Armstrong
Dimensions: 3,5 x 21 x 8,7 m

Installation views: Thomas Bruns