Artists: Birgit Megerle and Robert Müller
Exhibition title: Enfanterie
Venue: KIRCHGASSE, Steckborn, Switzerland
Date: September 12 – November 7, 2020
Photography: images copyright and courtesy of the artists and KIRCHGASSE, Steckborn
Animals, children, animal children, Menagerie des enfants. With new works and for their first exhibition at Kirchgasse, Birgit Megerle and Robert Müller formulate a – sometimes literal – notion of reproduction. In the process, projections onto childhood, care and development, and their fictionality are negotiated.
Birgit Megerle’s paintings depict animal mothers on the threshold of domestication – educating and conditioning: a duck gliding, surrounded by its ducklings, on lake water. “Nature” and “culture” collide on the outskirts of the city, where wild boars find food in rubbish bins and in people’s gardens.
Robert Müller’s pastels portray historical figures such as Rousseau, Saint-Simon and Darwin as children, as well as picturing other fictions: an adolescent faun, a child dressed as a vampire. The animated wood that is Pinocchio, awakened by the loneliness of the woodcarver Gepetto, longs – after having been socially tamed – to be a real boy.
Side by side, the interplay of the two series draws attention to culturally allocated roles, their constructions and the desires associated with them.
Birgit Megerle (*1975 in Geisingen, DE) lives in Berlin. Recent exhibitions include Beach Office, Berlin (2019), Emanuel Layr, Vienna (2019), Le Bel Ordaire, Pau (2019), Galerie Neu, Berlin (2018), Emanuel Layr, Rome (2018), Kunstverein Bielefeld (2017), Overduin & Co., Los Angeles (2017), Kunsthaus Glarus (2017).
Robert Müller (*1979 in Berlin, DE) lives in Berlin. Recent exhibitions include Lars Friedrich, Berlin (2020), Schleuse, Vienna (2019), Acappella, Naples (2019), New Toni, Berlin (2019), Felix Gaudlitz, Vienna (2019), Die Welt, Berlin (2018), Galerie der Stadt Schwaz (2018).
