Without directly or explicitly referring to the world of the Baroque, numerous references to Baroque motifs and content can be found in Anja Luithle’s works. These include a delight in the sensual and material, a connection to everyday life, a playful approach to materials, the conscious use of technical and visual means, the incorporation of theatrical elements, and the juxtaposition of appearance and reality.

The Baroque’s beloved depiction of the world as a stage on which the tragicomic stories of life, both big and small, unfold is echoed in Anja Luithle’s objects. Homemade costumes and costume fragments, various accessories such as corsets, shoes, wigs, glasses and handbags, she creates portraits of “typical” characters who have all kinds of stories to tell: of joys and sorrows, of desires and fears, of the desire for self-expression and the need for protection and intimacy, of attack and defence – of one passion and another. Instead of naked bodies, Anja Luithle shows disembodied shells that nevertheless have essential things to say about human inner life. Set in motion by motors, the figures become an imaginary ballet, protagonists of a world theatre that, thanks to ironic self-reflection, continues to turn even without the promise of a better world.

Curator: Andrea Hofmann