L’Île imaginaire

Schulz und Schulz
2017

“My face is all red, with nothing but an eye, in the forehead. I move through impenetrable fog, a little lost in cluttered ideas.I am being pursued by shadows in vast dazzling regions. My demons infuse me with a thousand deliria to entertain me and draw me further away from melancholy.”

Patricia Dreyfus, Dreams on the imagined island (Extract from the Carnet de Notes), 2017

Insomnia

Benteli
2011

Being cursed with sleeplessness, Emile Cioran wrote, is “an extremely painful experience, a catastrophe. But it allows you to understand things that the others cannot understand: sleeplessness puts you outside the living’s domain, outside humanity.”

What medicine nowadays seeks to combat with drugs and sleep laboratories has to many artists always acted as a spur: they would spend whole nights awake and use this painful but equally lucid condition to pursue their work. It’s probably no different for Patricia Dreyfus – “Insomnia”, at any rate, is how she has chosen to call the survey of her work presented here. It is also the title of one of her drawings. Almost as if suspended in mid-air, a window signifies an interior space in which a bed is seen standing on a ground that is hard to identify – a carpet maybe? A large puddle? Or the haven reserved for sleep and dreaming to which the male figure on the paper fails to gain access? The bed is not rooted in a fixed place, but is fitted with wheels rather than legs. The male figure has attached some kind of harness to the bottom end of the bed and can be seen dragging it away at a vigorous pace. Whether the enigmatic ground will shift with the bed or stay behind on the same spot is left to the viewer’s imagination. Anyone who has been plagued with insomnia will be familiar with the idea of changing location in the hope of perhaps finally finding sleep somewhere else. So a mobile bed which can be pulled around and relocated as one fancies would make an apposite piece of furniture for all insomniacs. At the same time, the bed’s function is also reversed. It is supposed to be a place where people can retreat, find peace and shelter; yet here the bed takes on a life of its own, has to be put on a leash like a dog and “tamed”. The bed is not there to serve human needs, it challenges us to highly exacting interaction. This is how the victims of insomnia feel – Patricia Dreyfus’s drawing offers a gentle, cheerful expression of an inner condition which may cause loneliness and anguish but can also act as a motor for creative work. A man who hauls his bed behind him is someone we could altogether imagine being a performance artist.

The insomniacs’ involuntary “bright nights” cannot be compared with the normal waking state during the daytime. Sleeplessness engenders an intermediate state in which dream and reality merge and fantasies and phobias acquire a compelling power, in which poetry might offer an anchor of stability. The rational control exerted by daytime consciousness becomes unhinged, the subconscious and repressed urges break loose – exactly as the Surrealists had hoped for. “Pure psychic automatism” was how André Breton defined the art of Surrealism. Techniques such as “automatic writing” or “automatic drawing” could trigger this automatism, channels for an unintended and spontaneous expression of the artist’s subconscious who surrenders control over a text or a picture and grants accident an actively creative role. Patricia Dreyfus still employs these techniques, although – now almost ninety years after the Surrealist Manifesto – she of course arrives at different artistic results.

Her work is a fusion of several disciplines – sculpture, drawing and photography – whereby no one of these alone would be conceivable without either of the others. Dreyfus’s sculptures, for instance, crop up in her drawings and her photographic series, emerging both as elements of composition and vehicles of meaning. The themes the artist explores are always apparent, whichever medium she uses. They address the fantasies and chasms of our subconscious, deal with our assimilation of the world and our sense of loss, speak about invulnerability and fear, atonement and pain. In other words, her work plumbs the charged field of ambivalence that she evidently identifies as the basic condition of human existence. Patricia Dreyfus frequently treats this underlying tension with lightness, understated irony and humour, creating works that with calm aloofness dismiss the supremacy of the subconscious – something the Surrealists would have considered inconceivable: insomnia gives way to poetry that is as bright as day.

Heads

Small heads modelled in clay form the hub of Patricia Dreyfus’s work. Wherever she goes, she takes moist clay with her, allowing her – in the manner of “automatic sculpting” – to create new heads on the spur of the moment. In recent years she has crafted over a thousand of these tiny sculptures. She never bases them on “real” human faces, yet these modelled effigies come across as lifelike portraits of actual people of the most varied provenience. It is a paradox we are already familiar with from the sculpture of antiquity, whose fictive portraits largely bear the most strongly individualized traits. By using clay of different colours to make her heads, Dreyfus not only heightens their self-evident, direct impact but also withdraws them from the viewer’s frame of reference. In a mysterious way her sculptures appear to have slipped through the fabric of time: they could equally be mistaken for relics from antiquity or artistic products of classical Modernism or even contemporary art. Some of the clay heads also serve as forms for making moulds. She then casts the sculptures in silicon or bronze, imbuing them with a different aura by means of the material. In bronze they appear to have been made for eternity, fictitious miniature monuments that are still waiting to meet their human likenesses. Cast in transparently clear or uniformly dyed silicon, they are reminiscent of anatomy models. Here, the focus lies less on individual traits than on their phenotypic character – the human being in all variations of its “outward form” is now officially cleared for investigation and research. 

Patricia Dreyfus’s sculpted heads can be grasped as friendly companions, as protective talismans. At the same time, they also call to mind fetishes and voodoo magic. The artist constantly exposes her heads to different situations: she plants them into everyday surroundings, outside on the street, in open nature or in hotel rooms, thereby creating puzzling, occasionally even absurd or seemingly axiomatic constellations. Art is pitted against reality on an equal footing, giving rise to something one might call a “third order”. In addition, the artist assembles large numbers of heads to form installations suggestive of mass graves, or combines them with commonplace items, found objects and texts to create mises en scène in boxes – small stages as settings for the enactment of the kind of intimate psychoanalytic theatre that would have given pleasure not only to Daniel Spoerri. Dreyfus occasionally seals the heads inside jars as if she were building an archive whose profile – anatomical, psychological, artistic – is to be decided by the viewer. Throughout her work, however, she unerringly upholds the ambivalence at the core of in the sculptures’ impact. This ambivalence harbours a condition that Sigmund Freud perceived in the “uncanny”, the constant presence of something deeply familiar. 

Portraits with heads

Especially familiar to Patricia Dreyfus are the people she has portrayed in her most recent photo series of “Portraits with heads” – members of her own family and close friends. Asking her subjects to choose which and how many of the sculpted heads they wished to be accompanied by, the artist left the decision entirely up to them. She observed how much the expression and the posture of her models changed once they were holding one or several heads in their hands, as if some mysterious interaction between the model and the sculptures had been struck up in which she as the photographer was also included. During the shoot her family members and friends were instructed to think of “nothing”. The pictures were all taken in natural light (near a window) and not post-processed.

 The mood in these images is very earnest; the subjects conceal nothing before the camera, confronting the viewer with their immediate, self-assured gazes which project, indeed thrust, their individual stories out “beyond the frame”. In this photo series Patricia Dreyfus appears to be exploring the deeper meaning of family, in a broader sense that also includes friends, and how, over and again, these individually discrete subjects end up constituting a community. The small terra cotta heads act as a bridge and, at the same time, serve as mediators between the viewer and the portrayed subjects – as if they too belonged to this community, as if they were plying the human models with crucial questions. They could be imagined as the forebears of the portrayed individuals, wielding influence far beyond their own lifetimes. In the encounter with a pregnant woman, however, they directly address the future. In each instance, they shield the portrayed subjects from loneliness; their very timelessness more emphatically locates the people in the photographs in a concrete here and now.

Drawings

Of course, the small heads also crop up as a motif in Dreyfus’s drawings. They can be seen emanating from the skull of the “Woman with cut-off arms” like antennae, transforming the figure into a strange extra-terrestrial being capable of observing the world simultaneously from a myriad of different perspectives – whereby one of the heads has already dropped from its stalk and seems in the process of becoming “autonomous”. In “Voraciousness” a man viewed in profile is just about to swallow a small crowned head. Maybe he is simply inhaling somewhat too vigorously – in any case, he is on the point of ingesting the tiny defenceless king. In “Dawn trapped” a bottle is packed with heads, with one head acting as a stopper; by thus acquiring a face, the bottle is transformed into a living being. Indeed, hybrids seem to hold sway in the graphic world of Patricia Dreyfus’s drawings. Human faces are fused with objects, human bodies merge into architecture. In “Removal” a woman is shown proceeding on all fours, with her hands inside a pair of high heels and an entire building planted on her shoulders where her head is supposed to be, smoke billowing freely from its chimneys. The drawing shows female identity in a state of evident confusion; performing her various roles as the caring wife, the seductive lover and – in drastic expression – the submissive domestic pet culminates in a mental and emotional blackout.

 Patricia Dreyfus is driven by an inner imperative to make marks on paper, draws like other people keep diaries. She constantly orbits around motifs relating to female identity, sexuality and vulnerability, but which also manifest female strength: “Attachment” shows a naked woman nailed to a cross, a nipple on a breast serving as a mound supporting the cross. Although dismembered hands can be seen reaching out to touch her, the crucified woman does not give the impression of someone unduly suffering. On the contrary, with an assured and almost cheerful countenance she appears to have come to terms with her situation.

 These “automatic drawings” – which to some extent the artist later combines and digitally modifies – generate their own dream (or sometimes also nightmare) logic which the viewer can “tap in to” in a freely associative manner. Her appetite for pictorial puzzles, which the viewer will never fully “solve” or paraphrase with language, is a quality she shares with other female artists of the 20th and 21st century. Among them, in terms of their choice of themes and linear rendition one could certainly cite Louise Bourgeois and Tracy Emin as “sister spirits” of Patricia Dreyfus. Shortly before Bourgeois died, she and Emin began a joint project. Bourgeois painted gouaches of male and female torsi, around which Emin added her own small drawings that, uninhibited by fear, speak of love, pain, desire and loss. One prominent feature of this collaboration is the age gap between the two artists: Bourgeois and Emin were separated by more than fifty years; the older woman’s art (similar to that of Patricia Dreyfus) is rooted in psychoanalysis; the younger woman’s art is couched in the controversial hipness of the Young British Artists. None of these three artists could be termed as explicitly “feminist”. Yet they each pursue a questioning of female identity and vulnerability, of the interaction between the sexes so frequently defined by abuse of power, of hidden psychological and biographical depths that are surmounted with humour and poetry. Such questioning continues to be as timeless in its imperative necessity as ever before.

Dagrun Hintze, 2011 I Translated by Matthew Partridge

Signes de têtes

Mendibourne
1996

…the infinite ensemble of heads creates a vast family of people all relaying their thoughts to one another like so many sparks required to arm Prometheus.

Timeless family. Ancient and modern. Egyptian, Roman, African, pre-Columbian…

Everyone here will take pleasure in seeking his own: heads they have dreamt of, they had once run into, or feel they might recognise tomorrow.

Pierre- Antoine Huré

HEADS! HEADS! HEADS!

Dagrun Hintze, Carmen Putschky and Harald F. Theiss

The small clay heads emerge later, evolving from this graphic work as sculptural elements that enrich and extend her artistic language. These heads, unreal and created instinctively, reappear in her photographic series and installations, serving as recurring motifs and vehicles of meaning. They are central to her exploration of the abstract and surreal, inviting viewers to dive into Dreyfus's unique universe.

The sculptures vary in color and texture: the fragile, organic terracottas contrast with the smoother, colder bronzes. Both are transformed by heat, moving from a malleable state to a permanent one, reflecting the tension between temporality and durability.

Since 2018, Dreyfus has expanded her explorations by incorporating embroidery, a medium that allows her to delve deeper into her imagination while highlighting the complexity of human experiences. Her photographs in turn stage her sculptures in specific contexts and offer viewers new and fascinating perspectives.

In her pictorial work, the unpredictable plays a fundamental role, structuring her entire oeuvre and expressing itself without constraint. Symbolic elements condense into enigmatic settings, suggesting inner worlds inhabited by the artist's unique psycholinguistic imagery. These are imagined realities, haunted by memories, personal stories, and mental and physical experiences.

Through this multidimensional exploration, Dreyfus confronts the fantasies and abysses of the subconscious, the appropriation and loss of the world, invulnerability and fear, redemption and pain. She approaches the inherent tension in the ambivalence of human existence with lightness, discreet irony, and humor, creating works that elegantly distance themselves from the dominance of the unconscious and its vulnerabilities.

Based on Dagrun Hintze, Carmen Putschky and Harald F. Theiss

S U S P E N D E D

Dr. Carmen Putschky

At the same time, they are arranged symmetrically on the transparent fabric - there are 50 fields in four horizontal and nine vertical stripes. This regularity is lost on the floor - the rectangular pieces of fabric are now laid out carelessly and as if at random. They take up space beyond the edge of the hanging, transparent fabric. In this floor area there is a small plaster model on the fabric. It is universally recognisable as the simple shape of a house. Starting from this, red threads run across the surface towards the rectangles distributed on the floor. The result is a tangle of lines whose direction of movement cannot be determined. The house stands for the personal centre, the matrix. It appears inaccessible, intact. From there, there is a network to and from the pictures, i.e. in a figurative sense to the experiences. This arrangement stands for the individual life paths of each person. The intertwined red threads point in different directions and are reminiscent of pulsating blood vessels. The rectangles have an embroidered linear black frame. They also contain embroidered graphic motifs in black, red, pink and orange. The motifs are female figurative representations - sometimes a head, sometimes a shape that only resembles a woman's body, sometimes concretely recognisable figures. Often there are only hints, sometimes it is more concrete, always enigmatic and surreal. The female figures are presented in various states: in pairs or alone, upside down, standing or lying down, pregnant or giving birth, sometimes they become metamorphotic beings. They often display certain key stimuli such as red, high-heeled shoes, mouths, breasts and vulvas. The images suggest the telling of a story - each individual image tells something and all of them together form a sequence of images. 

The entire installation appears almost immaterial - transparent, light, soft, delicate and at the same time an impressive obstacle. The work is expansive, uses tangible materials, gets in the way, intervenes in the surroundings - including the recipient's mental space. According to the dictionary, the word "suspended" has many possible translations such as floating, hanging, indefinite, undecided, postponed, cancelled, halted. The work "Suspended" can thus be associated with memories of experiences, sometimes present, sometimes buried, not influenceable, subjective and determining the personality of each person. Suspended is a personal work, it tells the life story of a woman, like a retrospective of a passionate and intense life. A narrative flow overwhelms us. Nevertheless, we are not in a position to take a voyeuristic look - we sense that art harbours the knowledge of many experiences, adventures, sufferings, joys, sorrows, pains and pleasures. 

However, we can only read the enigmatic sequences of images through our own experiences and thus come to reflect on ourselves: What have we experienced? What defines us? How do we want to organise our lives and our relationships?

Biographical Note

Dreyfus was born in Dakar, raised in Paris, and now resides in Berlin. Without needing to know much about her biography, one can conclude from her artistic stance, as seen in her work "Suspended," that her themes often concern her womanhood, her life as a woman in a patriarchally defined world, and her desire for a self-determined life. This range of themes appears diversely in her work, which is very versatile in media and characterized by figurative elements. Dreyfus is interested in people, in human interactions. Therefore, she repeatedly creates, shapes, and presents heads – never alone, but always as many, as a society. They appear in different media – two-dimensional, three-dimensional – as embroidery, as sculptures, as drawings, and as photographs. Patricia Dreyfus does not shy away from new experiments. The sculptural heads differ in color and effect. The terracottas are more fragile than the bronzes, the latter smoother and cooler; both archaic, classical materials are processed with heat. Initially soft in processing, they harden later and become unchangeable. The drawings are quickly and intuitively worked, almost automatically linear structures seem to form shapes that become head-like, cubic, sometimes surreal structures. Finally, the photographs serve as a reflection of her own work, showing it in certain contexts and constellations, offering the viewer an intriguing change of perspective.

C. Putschky

L 'I M A G I N A I R E von Insel und anderen Phantasmen

Text von Harald F. Theiss

From today's perspective, the appeal of the term lies in its openness—linked with an almost inexhaustible turning towards constructions of personal mythologies. Dreyfus, in her drawings, embroideries, and tapestries, narrates of a second mysterious reality with almost lyrical images. In oneof her text-images, she writes: "I let myself be carried away by my imagination... We all carry within us our imaginary islands." Transported by one's own imagination, their fantastical image contents can initially be located beyond conceivable experience. Behind the enigmatic events lies a longing to find explanations for the rational within the irrational. Between magical realism and surreal artistic actions, Dreyfus invents fictional places: imaginary islands. Magical moments always create a changed awareness of our environment. Her artistic metaphors are accompanied by texts she writes alongside them. This inner dialogue between visual and textual language also raises questions about the essential in self-reflective reception. Initially reminiscent of the characteristics of Pittura Metafisica, a movement also influenced by texts about the supernatural, the content is marked by inexplicability andmystery, aiming less to paint in a certain way than to observe in a certain way—a concept that was stimulating for the subsequent Surrealism, a cultural movement famously expressing itself as a way oflife and art against traditional norms since the 1920s.

In "l’ I M A G I N A I R E, von Inseln und anderen Phantasmen," a fantastic space opens up, both in front of and behind Dreyfus's new tapestry works. In fictional literature, islands are not only the universally familiar, often distant dreamlike places of longing, but they are also threatening in theirsolitude. It's no wonder the saying goes "No man is an island" when referring to social structures without which humans can hardly live. Dreams not only serve in literature as epic foreshadowings but also offer insights into future events within the plot. It seems that Dreyfus unconsciously experiments with these and other ideas, leaving the islands of happiness as fiction. Created for a presentation in Brussels, two tapestries from the cycle L'Îles imaginaires are shown in relation to her drawings and embroideries from recent years at this exhibition during "Gallery Weekend."

Textile art is intertwined with human history and has long ceased to be considered as merely dusty tapestries. The once representative and magnificent art of tapestry has recently awakened to new narratives. The (abstract) motifs changed with the threads woven into modernity and later shifted

towards socio-political connections over time. New textile historical images have emerged, addressinghumanity, nature, and life in general: woven manifestos like those of Anni Albers or Hannah Ryggen. The original form of communication remains preserved to this day. Dreyfus has further developed hersurreal formal language coherently. She follows uncontrolled rules, even in the translation of her inner images into various textile production processes. These are self-reflections through which she observes events from a certain perspective, commenting on or even questioning forms of humanexistence. In Jacques Lacan's theory, the "Imaginary" is a place of self-recognition and self-portrayal, but also a realm of desire and fantasies.

The informational content and interpretation are left to the viewers. According to the artist, an inner necessity and the unpredictable play a decisive role in finding the imagery. It shapes her entire body of work, stemming from the so-called state of "Insomnia" and expressing itself somewhat automatically and uncensored. Already in historical Surrealism, the subconscious and dreams were used as creative sources. Dreyfus's imaginary depictions of fabulous human and animal forms are mysterious and symbolically charged: scenes with trees and birds, houses and cages, or snakes condense into creative worlds. Automatic or almost involuntary, because the artist works compulsively and not from templates. Her phantasms impose themselves on her. They are comparable to "écriture automatique." André Breton described this as a process in which writing follows thinking unfiltered and uncontrolled. This is best achieved in the state of half-sleep at twilight. Breton wrote: "Those whohave not tried this themselves will have difficulty imagining it more precisely."

The newer Surrealism is feminine, a notion that has only recently been acknowledged, although "fantastic" women have been shaping art with surreal imagery since modern times. Presently, there is a renewed turn towards surreal concepts. While historical Surrealism was once a "cry of the spirit returning to itself," today's artistic positions are more relaxed towards this ambivalent state of tension in the face of overwhelming forces and approached from a more awake, fearless perspective.

Nevertheless, traces of unease are still visible. With Dreyfus, they lead into the unexplained. Her incomparable dream images cannot be copied.

Text, Harald F. Theiss

1    Johannes Ungelenk, Rainer Maria Rilke's "The Flamingos" A Kling(- ge-)ding, 2017, in Hofmannsthal Yearbook on European Modernism, pp.163-192.

2    See Peter Widmer, Subversion of Desire: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan's Work. Turia + Kant, Vienna, 1997.

3    André Breton, The Manifestos of Surrealism, translated by Ruth Henry, Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1968, pp. 11-29.

4    Fiona Bradley, Surrealism, East Fliedern, 2001, p. 6.

C A C H E

Harald Theiss, art historian, curator and author

It is Dreyfus' repeated principle and attempt to create a multi-layered system of order -  similar to the (temporarily) stored information or files from the digital cache. In this analogue case, the images from the "background" cannot be fully revealed visually in this analogue case - they remain (for the time being) veiled in the folds. The folding is a structure in which the past is stored, like a geological deposit. But only until Dreyfus herself or the visitors to the exhibition unfold the sculptural "curtain" - layer by layer. Through participation, the work allows Dreyfus to uncover her inner pictorial worlds. One becomes an accomplice in her soul images. The artist works compulsively and not according to templates. Her fantasies impose themselves on her - comparable to the "écriture automatique". 

André Breton described this as a process in which writing is steered by thinking without censure or conscious control. On the outside, their imaginary representations remain alien and elude any clear possibility of interpretation. Patricia Dreyfus leaves behind on the fragile and unfinished lines on the fabric. She has only recently begun to work with embroidery. Knowing her drawings, in which she expressed her unmistakable motifs, it is obvious that the traditional craft of embroidery formerly also called needle painting and still attributed to a more female activity, can be seen as a consequence of her artistic process. As in the drawings, figuration and abstractions are now sewn into stories. In the textile works they partly disappear in the folds of the fabrics. Or they suddenly make themselves more visible again - seeming to emerge from the surfaces to "reveal" themselves to us completely when the embroidered fabrics are opened. The pieces of cotton cloth offer the artist an almost perfect surface, but not solely as a vehicle for further exploring her artistic craft. The textile material is an intimate and soft fabric, that allows for veiling and can become a second protective skin. As a procedure, stitching is a different physical experience, potentially also more painful. Autobiographical references can also be found in this large-format work. The thread stroke is used in many ways. Over and again, she takes up the themes of female identities, gender relations and sexuality. Naturally associated with this, the role of the mother remains an ever-recurring motif in the most recent works of Patricia Dreyfus – as woman, artist and mother.  Similar to Louise Bourgeois’s work Umbilical Cord from 2002, the capacity to give life and the intrinsically related strong corporeal bond to other human beings maintained throughout life are at the same time also an expression of constant vulnerability.

Not only the exhibition is broadened with some mask-like and enigmatic looking heads -. so is the recurring head motif, the so-called têtes. Made out of different materials, it forms a discrete subject within Patricia Dreyfus' oeuvre. Here, too, forms of protection and covering are thematised. Masks and heads have a long cultural and art historical tradition. The human head in particular remains an important pictorial motif in art. This fascination might be based on the fact that we human beings have always considered the head as the key avatar of the spirit and the senses, and in particular of our self. We "wear" masks every day or we hide ourselves in this way. But which faces and thoughts reveal themselves behind them? The title “ce que disent les fleurs, 1,2,3,” (2022) suggests hidden references with regard to this consecutive and numbered work. Dreyfus leaves the associative answer and interpretation to the viewers ... 

Lettre à moi-même

Harald Theiss, art historian, curator and author

Lettre à moi-même is a project in several parts by Patricia Dreyfus, a French artist living in Berlin. It is an almost immeasurable personal cosmos of surrealistic stylistic elements that is manifest throughout her cross-genre work. At the hub of this largely figurative narrative is an autobiographical context. In this way, not only does she offer insights into this context but also provokes unmitigated involvement with it. Questions concerning origins, identity and gender are addressed – yet the focus lies on breaking through and breaking open boundaries, social norms and constraints.

This in fact is not a letter Patricia Dreyfus is writing to herself – rather, she is appropriating a linguistic system based on surreal (visual) signs. In this way, she uses artistic means to further develop a taxonomy that at the same time obeys its own, unrestrained rules. She leaves it up to the viewers as to how the levels of semantic and thematic content might be interpreted and perceived. As the artist tells us, her pictorial invention is driven foremost by inner necessity and serendipity. The unpredictable shapes her entire oeuvre: it is fostered by the state of what is known as insomnia and, in a certain manner, finds expression automatically, without the interference of censorship. Dreams and the subconscious had already been mined as a creative source in Surrealism. Dreyfus’s imaginary depictions of mythical creatures, human figures and animals are enigmatic and symbolically charged: scenes showing trees, houses, cages, crosses, birds and snakes evoke dream sequences (as in L’Île imaginaire, 2017, nos. 2, 16, 39). Automatically, or of their own accord, since Dreyfus’s work is propelled by compulsion and not derived from source material. Her phantasms suggest themselves to her. They are comparable to the Surrealists’ “écriture automatique”. André Breton described this as a process in which writing is steered by thinking without censure or conscious control. This is best achieved in an intermediate conscious state on the verge of falling asleep during twilight. Of this process Breton remarked: “Anyone who has not himself tried to take this path will find it very hard to picture it more precisely."

The new Surrealism is female, as was recently claimed, even though “fantastical” women artists have been shaping art with their surreal pictorial worlds since the beginning of Modernism. Currently, one can observe a resurging tendency towards Surrealist concepts. Whereas historic Surrealism was still “[…] a cry of the mind turning back on itself”, in present-day approaches to painting and artistic production this ambivalent state of tension incurred by subconscious forces is encountered largely with greater calm and from a more vigilant, less anxious perspective. Nonetheless, there still remain traces of disquiet – especially in the artist’s strikingly figurative scenarios and, above all, in her most recent paintings which show fictional accomplices joining forces with an anonymous post-digital generation.

Lettre à moi-même #3 shows recent works by Patricia Dreyfus, and is at the same time an attempt to get closer to her oeuvre of dreamt reality. It bundles together in fresh constellation her coloured drawings from the group of works titled L’Île imaginaire (2017) and not only juxtaposes them with her embroidered pieces, but also initiates a dialogue with the extensive series of Les Invisibles from 2020, works on paper she produced on an almost daily basis during society’s comprehensive standstill over the past year. Once again, we encounter more of her têtes, now drawn, an ever-recurring motif. Within the ensemble of Dreyfus’s work these heads represent an artistic subject in its own right. As such, the human head has always been a central pictorial theme in art. This unceasing fascination might lie in the way we human beings have always seen the head as the paramount embodiment of the spirit and the senses, and in particular of the self. These heads modelled in clay and bronze have a raw and archaic feel, bringing to mind the miniatures displayed in glass cabinets in ethnological museums (Tête 0051 en boîte, 2019). In their quantity, Dreyfus’s new diminutive drawings of heads quickly foster their own constructed mythology. More clearly defined in terms of individuality are their various facial expressions. She compares them to life companions whose mysterious company she gladly shares. Drawn with seemingly just a few lines, the heads feel like portraits of human characters she might have met somewhere at some time.

Kinships become visible, over and beyond those between the various artistic media. Where one was still speculating about the numerous heads in Les Invisibles because they remind us of protagonists or even contemporaries in an imagined world, Patricia Dreyfus’s embroideries strike us as far more intimate and radical. Her oeuvre is deeply influenced by the artist’s life and can be “read” as a kind of richly referential journal. Much remains alien, thus eluding all possibility of unequivocal interpretation. Clues are left in the present by (corporeal) signs. A hidden sense. Here, what is concealed plays a visible role. Dreyfus turns a lot inside out. Her dogged perseverance is unique. Just like the state of uncertainty in several of her “unfathomable” scenarios with their constantly varying density that represent everyday situations marked by fragility and a lack of orientation. Her distinctive motifs, predominantly female figures, are drawn or embroidered, a technique with which she has only lately begun working. To those familiar with her drawings, it makes sense to view a traditional craft of this kind – which also used to be called silk shading and even today is still considered a predominantly female activity – as a logical consequence of her artistic practice: stitching as rebellion. Her embroideries do not create patterns or ornaments; but certainly inscriptions: I will survive is stitched onto one of her pieces from 2018, and can be read almost as a public statement.

Dreyfus is not interested in precision or attention to detail; instead the lines she leaves on the fabric are brittle and fragmented. As in her drawings, figuration and abstraction are woven into stories. In some of her textile works they partially disappear into the folds thrown by the fabrics (as in Haute-cour, 2018). In others, they suddenly make their presence felt more forcefully, become visible again and appear to stand out from the surfaces – only to fully “unveil” themselves the moment the fabric is unfurled (Le cri_shoot, 2018). The pieces of cotton cloth offer the artist an almost perfect surface, but not solely as a vehicle for further exploring her artistic craft. As a procedure, stitching is a different physical experience, potentially also more painful. We can also detect autobiographical references in these works. Here, she makes multiple use of her stitched line. Over and again, she takes up the themes of female identities, gender relations and sexuality. Naturally associated with this, the role of the mother remains an ever-recurring motif in the most recent works of Patricia Dreyfus – as woman, artist and mother. Similar to Louise Bourgeois’s work Umbilical Cord from 2002, the capacity to give life and the intrinsically related strong corporeal bond to other human beings maintained throughout life are at the same time also an expression of constant vulnerability.

Herein lies one of the outstanding aspects of Patricia Dreyfus’s work whose narrative is related through complex and, at times, disconcerting images, frequently peering into impenetrable depths. The question is then: consciously or not? Her dream images move us and allow us to participate in states of mind that evoke both shameless candour and simultaneous fragility, thereby prompting a range of different responses. Symbolic elements are condensed into enigmatic settings suggestive of interior visual worlds shaped by psycholinguistic imagery. This is a disconnected (imagined) reality haunted by memories, personal history, experiences and insights.

Patricia Dreyfus’s multi-faceted artistic work, in which the principle of reiteration constitutes a unifying element, continues to be an almost obsessive and unsparing confrontation with her own life, her Histoire de famille, as one of her drawings from 2018 is titled. Her life is the engine of her artistic energy, and yet with surreal visual means she also reflects on the ubiquitous and universal conditions of human – and specifically female – experience and understanding. In doing so, she achieves a balance between uncompromising directness and sensitive observation. In a process of abstract subjectification Patricia Dreyfus channels her personal experiences and thoughts through the transformation of the subconscious, but without fully abandoning touches of irony.

This is about more than simply governing her dreams – at best it is a yearning for more life…

Berlin, 28.03.2021 I Translated by Matthew Partridge

Von Köpfen, Körpern und anderen Verwandtschaften

Harald Theiss

Von Köpfen, Körpern und anderen Verwandtschaften

Harald Theiss

Modellierte Köpfe, immer wieder: Bodeninstallationen mit unzählig vielen Köpfen, Köpfe hinter Glas arrangiert, wieder andere Köpfe gruppiert und auf einzelne Metallstäbe fixiert - nahezu in Augenhöhe platziert, entwickeln sie mit ihrer Präsenz minimale Körperlichkeiten und Nähe. Mit ihren Köpfen aus Ton oder Bronze schaut Patricia Dreyfus in Köpfe hinein. Damit provoziert sie bei den Betrachterinnen und Betrachtern einen selbstreflektierenden Blick, der nicht selten auch verstörend sein kann. Vor allem die schwarzen Felder in der Arbeit Charbon, mit den unzähligen Köpfen, nur manchmal vereinzelt und im Sandboden fast verloren, hinterlassen in ihrer Mehrdeutigkeit ein unbequem ambivalentes Stimmungsbild. Selbst die farbigen und aufgehäuften Köpfe, wie bei Insomnia, erinnern uns an Massengräber oder auch an Schrumpfköpfe. Bei näherer und einzelner Betrachtung werden Patricia Dreyfus’ Köpfe zu seltsam anmutenden Protagonisten einer scheinbar vergangenen Zeit. Dreyfus ist aber nicht an Relikten und Geschichte interessiert, sondern vielmehr an Geschichten. Ihre zum Teil farbigen Köpfe aus Ton oder Bronze haben alle individuelle Züge. Nur zu Beginn erinnern sie an die uns vertrauten und in Glasvitrinen ausgestellten Miniaturen in den Museen der Kulturen, die in ihrer Ausführung oft einem idealen Bild entsprechen. Viel individueller dagegen sind die Gesichtsausdrücke bei den menschlichen «Têtes», wie Patricia Dreyfus sie nennt. Sie erscheinen wie Portraits von Menschen, denen sie irgendwo und irgendwann begegnet ist. Und dennoch, in ihrer Vielzahl entwickeln sie eine eigenständige, von ihr konstruierte Mythologie. 

Die Köpfe fordern auf eine distanzlose Art zum Dialog auf, trotz oder gerade wegen ihrer fragilen Erscheinung. Die Begegnung mit ihnen ist konfrontativer als in Dreyfus‘ späteren Zeichnungen, in denen die Köpfe zu vollständigen Körpern ausgeführt werden. Sie erheben sich vom Boden und die langen schwarzen Stäbe formen sich zu Linien, die sich wie schon in den Installationen zu Szenerien verdichten. Ihre unverkennbaren, meist weiblichen Figuren werden gezeichnet, animiert und jüngst auch gestickt. In den textilen Arbeiten verschwinden sie manchmal in den Faltungen, welche die Stoffe werfen. Oder sie machen sich plötzlich wieder mehr sichtbar - scheinen aus den Flächen hervorzutreten. Es sind zunächst Fragmente und Spuren von Körpern, die sich uns möglicherweise erst beim Aufschlagen der bestickten Stoffe gänzlich „entblößen“ - ähnlich wie in den animierten Arbeiten, bei denen wir zu Komplizen ihrer erzählten Geschichten werden. Dreyfus läßt die Betrachter teilnehmen am Entstehungsprozess, bei dem sich die Linien erst im Laufe einer abgespielten Zeit verbinden oder auch wieder auflösen. 

Davor hat die Künstlerin ihre Frauenfiguren bereits in vielen Zeichnungen auf eine radikale Art dargestellt. Auf diese Weise erlaubt sie uns auch in ihren Kopf zu blicken. Die unzähligen Blätter sind zumeist in den letzten 20 Jahren und, wie Dreyfus selber sagt, automatisch entstanden. Erst waren es einzelne Skizzen und dann die Carnets, in denen ihre serielle Obsession mit Linien, vor allem übers Blättern, erzählerischer auf Papier festgehalten wird. Die Carnets sind mehr als nur Skizzenbücher - sie bilden innerhalb des gesamten Werkes von Dreyfus eine eigene künstlerische Position. Automatisch oder wie von selbst deswegen, weil Dreyfus nicht nach Vorlagen arbeitet, sind sie vergleichbar mit der surrealistischen „écriture automatique“. André Breton hat die "écriture automatique" als einen Vorgang beschrieben, bei dem das Schreiben dem Denken unzensiert und unkontrolliert folgt. Am besten gelingt dies in einem Zwischenzustand des Halbschlafes in der Dämmerung. 

"Wer sich nicht selbst auf diesem Weg versucht hat, wird alle Mühe haben, sich ihn genauer vorstellen zu können."(André Breton) * 

In der Bildfindung spielt nach eigener Aussage der Künstlerin das Unvorhersehbare eine entscheidende Rolle. Es prägt ihr gesamtes Werk und speist sich aus diesem Zustand von Insomnia und kommt in gewisser Weise unzensiert zum Ausdruck. Auch im Surrealismus wurde das Unterbewusste und der Traum als kreative Quelle genutzt. Dreyfus imaginäre Darstellungen mit Fabelwesen, Menschen, Tieren sind rätselhaft und symbolisch aufgeladen: Bäume, Häuser, Käfige,Vögel und Schlangen erinnern an Traumsequenzen, deren Geschichten, es lässt sich vermuten, autobiografisch geprägt sind. Die Betrachter werden, in ihren Vorstellungen, aufgefordert, sie weiter zu denken. Die Blätter wirken daher manchmal wie Denkaufgaben und sind vielschichtig lesbar. Hier liegt eine der vielen Stärken in Patricia Dreyfus zeichnerischem Oeuvre, das oft in komplexen und verstörend wirkenden Bildern erzählt und nicht selten in Abgründe blickt - es stellt sich die Frage: bewusst oder unbewusst? Ihre Traumbilder berühren und lassen uns an Zuständen teilhaben, die von schamloser Offenheit und gleichzeitig von Zerbrechlichkeit erzählen und somit unterschiedliche Reaktionen auslösen. Die symbolischen Elemente verdichten die rätselhaften Szenarien, die wie Bilderwelten aus dem Inneren wirken - geprägt von einer psycholinguistischen Bildersprache. Es sind (imaginäre) Bilderwirklichkeiten, besessen von Erinnerungen, Erfahrungen, Erlebnissen und Erkenntnissen.

Erinnerungen prägen und formen Identitäten. Gerade bei Künstlerinnen unserer Zeit reflektiert das Werk oft das eigene Erlebte und Erlittene. So finden sich auch in den Arbeiten von Patricia Dreyfus Bezüge zur persönlichen Vergangenheit und Geschichte, und sie können als deren Rekonstruktionen interpretiert werden. Das Werk ist eng vom Leben der Künstlerin geprägt und kann als eine Art komplexes Tagebuch gelesen werden. Neben dem Motiv der Bibel ist auch ein Buch in der Zeichnung «La femme aux nouvelles» zu sehen, in der sich die weibliche Figur damit bedeckt, ebenso in «Lettre à moi- même», in dem das aus dem tiefsten inneren Geschriebene gleichzeitig nach Außen gelassen wird. 

Dreyfus’ Zeichnungen sind sehr körperlich. Für die Künstlerin ist der Akt des Zeichnens ein nie endender Produktionsprozess, bei dem das Imaginäre als Ganzes in subjektive Bilder transformiert wird und die eine kohärente visuelle Sprache und Narration vereinen. Im Zentrum dieses Narrativs steht, wie gesagt, ein autobiografischer Zusammenhang und eine unbewusste Notwendigkeit, nach einem Ordnungssystem zu suchen. Dabei bleibt vieles auch fremd und entzieht sich so einer Deutungsmöglichkeit. Es sind vielmehr (Körper) Zeichen, die in der Gegenwart Hinweise hinterlassen. Die Zeichen sind durchdrungen von Körperlichkeit. Dreyfus zeichnerische Eigensinnigkeit ist unverkennbar, ebenso der immer wieder unterschiedlich dichte Schwebezustand der Szenerien, in denen eher ein menschlicher Zustand von fragiler Orientierungslosigkeit dargestellt ist und für die Betrachterinnen und Betrachter zum Ereignis wird - ähnlich wie bei den Animationen, in denen sie noch stärker Teil einer imaginären Wirklichkeit werden. 

Ein abstrahiertes Stimmungsbild ist jüngst auch verstärkt in den Stickereien zu beobachten, einem Medium, mit dem Dreyfus noch nicht lange arbeitet. Kennt man ihre Zeichnungen liegt es nahe, dass ihr das traditionelle Handwerk, früher auch Nadelmalerei genannt und bis heute einer eher weiblichen Tätigkeit zugerechnet, als eine Konsequenz ihrer künstlerischen Praxis zu betrachten ist. Sticken als Rebellion. Ihre Stickereien zeigen keine Muster oder Ornamente; Schriftzüge schon, nur mit einem anderen, vor allem persönlichen Anspruch - I will survive ist auf einer ihrer letzten Arbeiten und fast wie eine Nachricht zu lesen. Dreyfus interessiert sich nicht für die Präzision und Liebe zum Detail, sondern hinterlässt auf dem Stoff eher brüchige Linien. Wie in den Zeichnungen werden Figuration und Abstraktionen zu Geschichten vernäht. 

Das textile Material ist an sich ein intimer und weicher Stoff, der das Verhüllen erlaubt und zu einer zweiten und schützenden Haut werden kann. Anders mit und in den Werkstoffen bei Dreyfus. Die innere Haut wird mit dem Faden spürbar nach Außen getragen, das Verborgenen sichtbar gemacht.

Die Baumwolltücher bieten der Künstlerin eine beinahe perfekte Oberfläche, nicht nur um ihr künstlerisches Handwerk weiterzuentwickeln. Das Sticken ist im Entstehungsprozess eine andere körperliche, möglicherweise auch schmerzhaftere Erfahrung. Autobiographische Bezüge finden sich auch in diesen, in der Ausführung skizzenhaften Arbeiten. Dabei kommt ihr Fadenstrich auf vielfache Weise zum Einsatz. Immer wieder thematisiert sie weibliche Identitäten, durcheinander geratene Geschlechterverhältnisse. Sexualität und die damit auf natürliche Weise verknüpfte Mutterrolle bleiben auch in den jüngsten Arbeiten von Patricia Dreyfus - als Frau, Künstlerin und Mutter - wiederkehrende Motive. Ähnlich wie bei Louis Bourgois in Umbilical Cord (2002) ist die Fähigkeit, Leben zu geben, und die damit unabdingbare starke körperliche Verbindung zu Menschen ein Leben lang gleichzeitig auch ein Ausdruck von ständiger Verletzbarkeit. 

Patricia Dreyfus vielfältige künstlerische Arbeit, in der das Prinzip der Wiederholung das verbindende Element in ihren Skulpturen, Animationen, Stickereien und Zeichnungen ist, bleibt eine beinahe obsessive und schonungslose Auseinandersetzung mit dem eigenen Leben. Es bildet die Motivation ihres künstlerischen Schaffens und dennoch reflektiert sie damit allgegenwärtige und allgemein gültige Zustände menschlicher – und spezifisch weiblicher - Erfahrung und Erkenntnisse. 

Berlin, März 2019 I Harald Theiss, Kunsthistoriker, Kurator und Autor

* André Breton, « Die Manifeste des Surrealismus », Deutsch von Ruth Henry, Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1968, S. 11-29. 

_____________

About heads, bodies and other relations

Text Harald Theiss I Translation Matthew Partridge

Modelled heads, over and again: floor installations, behind glass, in groups or individually mounted on metal rods. At eye level, with their presence they acquire minimal physical traits and intimacy. In clay or bronze, Patricia Dreyfus’s heads betoken an inner gaze, prompting viewers to adopt a form of introspection that is not infrequently unsettling. The innumerable and occasionally isolated heads in her installation Charbon (Coal), or in the work Le sable (The sand), offer up a plethora of possible readings, leaving one with an unsettling sense of ambivalence. Even those colourful heads in heaps, as in Insomnia, remind us of mass graves or even shrunken heads. On closer and more focused inspection Patricia Dreyfus’s heads mutate into strange protagonists of a seemingly vanished world. But Dreyfus is less interested in relics and history than she is in stories. All her partially coloured clay or bronze heads have personal traits. At first sight they remind us of the familiar miniatures displayed in the glass cabinets of ethnological museums which often conform to idealised images. By contrast, the expressions of the human Têtes, as Patricia Dreyfus calls them, have much more individuality. They resemble portraits of people she might have run into by accident. Yet in their broad diversity they develop their own – self-constructed –mythology.

The heads seek dialogue without creating distance, in spite of, or precisely because of their fragile appearance. Encountering them is more of a confrontation than in Dreyfus’s recent drawings where her heads give way to entire bodies. As they rise up from the ground, the long black rods are transformed into lines that converge to create scenarios not unlike those of her installations. Her characteristic, mostly female figures are drawn, animated and, more recently, embroidered. In the textile works they sometimes disappear into the folds thrown by the fabrics, or they suddenly reveal themselves again, appearing to rise up out of the surfaces. They first emerge as fragments of bodies gradually unveiling themselves the moment we unfurl the embroidered fabric, similar to her animated works where we become accomplices to her unfolding stories. Dreyfus invites viewers to participate in the creative process, during which the lines converge or, indeed, draw apart again.

Previously, the artist had already depicted her female figures in a radical manner in numerous drawings. In this way she also offers us a glimpse inside her head. Myriad drawings have come about, most of them over the last twenty years – all done quite automatically, to use the artist’s words. Initially, they were no more than isolated sketches; then came her Carnets (Notebooks) in which with the help of lines she recorded her serial obsession on paper, page by page, in an increasingly narrational way. The Carnets are more than mere sketchbooks; they constitute a distinct body of work within her oeuvre. Automatistically, or by their own accord, because the artist does not consciously model her work on source material. The drawings are comparable to the Surrealists’ “écriture automatique”. André Breton described this process as creative production without being censored or steered by thinking. Ideally, it takes place in an intermediate state of half-sleep in twilight.

In her pictorial quest, so the artist tells us, the unpredictable plays a crucial role. It shapes her entire work, thrives on this state of insomnia and finds expression without subjection to censorship. In Surrealism, too, the unconscious and dreams were used as sources of creativity. Dreyfus’s fanciful depictions peopled with mythical figures, human beings and animals are mysterious and charged with symbols. Trees, houses, cages, birds and snakes are reminiscent of dream sequences whose stories could conceivably be autobiographically fuelled. Viewers are challenged to pursue their own associations. Thus the drawings serve as avenues for reflection and can be read in a variety of ways. Here lies one of the many fortes of Patricia Dreyfus’s body of drawings whose narrative is conjugated in often complex and unsettling images, offering glimpses of unfathomable depths. The question is then: consciously or not? Her dream images move us and allow us to participate in states of mind that evoke both shameless candour and fragility, and thereby prompt a variety of different responses. The symbolic elements are condensed into enigmatic settings suggestive of interior worlds marked by their own psycholinguistic imagery. These are (imagined) pictorial realities haunted by memories, personal history and physical and mental experiences.

Memories mark and shape identities. Particularly when it comes to female artists in our time, their artistic work often reflects their personal experience and suffering. Similarly, in Patricia Dreyfus’s works we also encounter references to her personal past and history, interpretable maybe as reconstructions. Her work is closely tied to her own personal life and can be read as a kind of complex intimate diary. In the drawing La femme aux nouvelles (The woman with the news), we see a female figure covering her nudity with a book. Likewise, in Lettre à moi-même (Letter to myself) the writing emerging from her inner depths is simultaneously delivered into the outside world.

Dreyfus’s drawings are highly physical, very corporeal. For the artist, the act of drawing is a never-ending productive process by which the imagined is transformed in its entirety into subjective images in which a coherent visual language and narrative are fused. As mentioned before, at the centre of this narrative stand an autobiographical context and an unconscious need to seek a system of order. Nonetheless, a number of elements remain alien and elude all possibility of interpretation. Rather, these are signs permeated by corporeality that leave clues in the present. Dreyfus’s dogged perseverance with her drawing is unique, just like the state of uncertainty in her scenarios with their constantly varying density, representing a human condition that is fragile and bereft of orientation, akin to her animation pieces where they appear even more to be part of an imagined reality.

More recently, this abstract mood has gained even greater intensity in her embroideries, a relatively fresh medium in Dreyfus’s work. To those familiar with her drawings it makes sense to view this kind of traditional craft – which also used to be called silk shading and even today is still considered more a female activity – as a logical consequence of her artistic practice. Stitching as rebellion. Her embroideries do not involve patterns or ornaments, although sometimes they employ inscriptions, albeit with a different, more personal tendency. I will survive can be read on one of her latest pieces, almost like a news ticker. Dreyfus is not interested in precision or attention to detail, preferring instead to leave quasi-fractured lines on the fabric. As in her drawings, figuration and abstraction are woven into stories.

Cloth is generally an intimate and supple material, suitable for shrouding or cloaking, capable of becoming a second, protecting skin, unlike other materials used by Patricia Dreyfus. The thread brings the inner skin out into the open, what was previously concealed is made visible.

The pieces of cotton cloth offer the artist an almost perfect surface, and not only as a way of further exploring her artistic craft. As a work process, stitching is quite a different physical experience, and potentially more painful too. In these works done in the manner of sketches we can also detect autobiographical references. She repeatedly addresses the issues of female identities, of disturbed sexual relations. Sexuality and the evidently associated role of the mother are fundamental motifs in all of Patricia Dreyfus’s most recent works – as woman, artist and mother. Similar to Louise Bourgeois’ Umbilical Cord (2002), the capacity to give life and the intrinsically related corporeal bond to other human beings throughout life are at the same time also an expression of unrelenting vulnerability.

Patricia Dreyfus’s multi-faceted artistic work, in which the principle of repetition constitutes the unifying element between her sculptures, animation pieces, embroideries and drawings, is an almost obsessive and unsparing confrontation with her own life. Her life is the source of her artistic imagination from which she draws stimulation to reflect the ubiquitous and universal conditions of human – and specifically female – experience and understanding.

Berlin, March 2019 I Harald Theiss, art historian, curator and author

* André Breton, « Die Manifeste des Surrealismus », Deutsch von Ruth Henry, Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1968, S. 11-29. 

______

The black Island

Dagrun Hintze

Houses are a recurrent motif in Patricia Dreyfus’s drawings – sometimes in the form of high-rise buildings, elsewhere as simple family homes in the way children paint them. In general, the motif belongs to the thematic complex of “women” or “femininity”. The drawing “Turbulenz-Zone” (Zone of turbulence) shows a naked female figure squatting on top of a somewhat crumpled block of flats; the figure is using the roof of the neighbouring building (which has been skewered by a rocket) as a makeshift tabletop to stand drinks on. Here, phallic symbolism (skyscraper, rocket) collides with seductive femininity. Items of clothing are strewn on the ground – maybe the naked figure tore them off her body, maybe they fell off the washing line that was no longer able to withstand such “turbulence”. In “Der zwingende Abgang” (The imperative departure) a female body is being sucked away – it is already halfway to becoming a skeleton, and its bones are rapidly disappearing inside an object which simultaneously appears to be a vacuum cleaner, a coffin and an elongated block of flats. The female role evidently seems to be defined from the outside, by things and fixed moments of reality which – at least in Patricia Dreyfus’s drawings – gives rise to puzzling consequences, extending even to self-dissolution.

In dream interpretation the house is an archetype commonly read as a symbol of the self and the soul of the dreamer, and stands for the way the subject “builds” his or her life. Freud ascribed the house to the woman, saw it as a symbolic synonym for the womb. It was the groundbreaking “house dream” dreamt by C. G. Jung in 1909 that sparked the disagreement between Freud and his follower. In the dream, Jung was wandering through various floors of a house when in the cellar he stumbled across walls from the Roman period, beneath which he found the remains of a primitive culture. This marked the discovery of the “collective unconscious”, whose existence Freud vehemently and persistently denied.

With her sculpture “Die schwarze Insel” (The black island) Patricia Dreyfus has formulated an image both for a present-day “collective unconscious” and the condition of our external world. A flat rectangular vessel (two metres long, one and a half metres wide) mounted on a plinth is filled with what seems to be jet black water, standing in which is a block of black polystyrene – a black island in a black ocean. Balancing on the ground of this polystyrene island laden with lumps and shards of coal is a house made of black cardboard, unstable and fragile, a place that can no longer serve anyone as a home. Patricia Dreyfus has created an image of the end of time, an island where death is omnipresent. Memories of recent catastrophes are awakened, the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, the tsunami and nuclear meltdown in Japan. We now have a notion of what a post-cataclysmic world would look like, and Dreyfus’s sculpture specifies this condition – even if newspapers and news agencies have long since turned their attention elsewhere. In 1922, T. S. Eliot undertook a similar act of “specification” in poetry. In “The burial of the dead”, the first section of his famous poem “The Waste Land”, he writes:

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow 

Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man, 

You cannot say, or guess, for you know only 

A heap of broken images, where the sun beats, 

And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,

And the dry stone no sound of water.

This too offers a description simultaneously of the external state of a barren and desolate world and of the inner condition of the isolated and spiritually empty individual in the modern era. Eliot concludes this passage with the words: “I will show you fear in a handful of dust”. Black dust that harbours nothing but the mummified remains of nature and civilisation also blankets everything in Patricia Dreyfus’s sculpture. If fear is to be kept from having the last word, this dust might instead be read as ashes, allowing some promise of hope to be construed in this work. Ash also stands for cleansing, rebirth and fertility.

Art is entrusted with the task of finding imagery for the present. Yet in contrast to the images generated by contemporary news it has the capacity to transcend horror and lend it a poetic and, under certain circumstances, even an “edifying” form. Art thereby offers relief, yet without ever calling for an end to action and thinking. Patricia Dreyfus’s sculpture “The black island”, her drawings and head sculptures, all carry a warning: we still have a chance to be mindful of the category of humanity. But it is high time we are.

Hamburg, October 2011 I Translated by Matthew Partridge