Collage, magazine and book clippings on mirror, framed, 30x30 cm ONGOING PROJECT
"Die Frau als Hausärztin" is a reference book on health topics written for housewifes in 1918. As a collage on tinted mirrors the topics described therin are illustrated with images from current fashion magazines. The range on different demands on femininity shown is also expandent by the mirror image of the viewer.
SURFACE TENSION
Collage, magazine clippings on paper, 40x40 cm, serie of 12
Judith Hugeners's collages from the series Surface Tension consist of what the buyer of expensive glossy fashion and lifestyle magazines is familiar with: sparkling jewelry, shiny nail polish, precious garments and pristine skin. Nothing is shown in its entirety, images of magazines are cut out precisely, fragmented and then newly arranged. No body is shown at large, and therefore a real sense of personality and physicality is omitted. Bernard's focus doesn't aim at showing depth, but surface, and as the title suggests it's the surface, which bends towards us, the viewers, visually and literally provoking tension. Due to the fragmentary character of any kind of collage, an unfamiliar visual language is its inevitable outcome and tension suddenly morphs into distortion. At this point, the effects of filmic close-ups come into play which on the one hand make details more visible, on the other make them more gigantic, grotesque and ambivalent in its evidence. Bernard's interest lies particularly in this imaginary which she thinks as a simulacrum in Jean Baudrillard's sense since the surface of the reproduced image in these magazines does not contain a reference to its conditions of production, but rather wants to conceal them. Baudrillard's The System of Objects (1968) is an early critique of objects which do not have a vital function anymore, but act as symbols of dreams and wishes of our society's members to become or be part of the „happy few”. Decontextualized by Bernard's entirely analog collage, a rather traditional artistic technique, the surface breaks open, and the images of lifestyle are seen as a force field of social discourse leaving the superficiality of this particular economic world behind, however also questioning the potentiality of beauty in its own making. Therefore, Bernard beats the superficial with its own power, leading the imagery of fashion fully shaped by the contemporary image of the young woman to its own end, a visual tautology. Text: Dr. Susanne Neubauer
SYSTEME DE LA MODE
Collage from magazine clippings, serie of 45, prints on photopaper, 76x108 cm, edition of 3
The book "The Language of Fashion" by Roland Barthes is considered a classic on the sociology of fashion and deals with the social signals we communicate trough fashion. The series of collages was created as a diary in the discussion of how fashion photography reinforces the signs of fashion or reduces them to absurdity.
