Who doesn’t know that seemingly endless wait at the doctor’s. It is an established part of the procedure - just like the question “are you a returning patient?” or showing one’s health insurance card.
A subtle nausea is stimulated in this room. Fear of the diagnosis. Thoughts about other people’s diseases. Danger of infection. The magazines. The television.
The plants. The art prints.
Gerrit Frohne-Brinkmann’s exhibition Dr. Perversi abstracts and exaggerates this scenario with the stereotypical room furnishing. Garish green linoleum floor, the fluffy, brown-beige door curtains, simple blue chairs and strictly arranged single-format drawings bring to mind 80s interiors, while furthermore conveying a strangely sterile and desolate atmosphere. The drawings were not produced onto human bodies by various plastic surgeons, but onto canvases. Along with the ceramic reproductions of carnivorous plants and plant pots distributed within the room, the works render a sense of unease.
In short: the space evokes horror film scenarios, rather than being a place of recovery. Nobody is called upon in this waiting room. Visitors linger in Dr. Perversi’s limbo. Were it not for Gerrit Frohne-Brinkmann’s humour. Instead of highlighting the aesthetic quality of the Surgical Drawings (2017) - presented as art in this context - the operations on body parts appear as absurd and funny undertakings. Uncoupled from the human body, the drawings seem more like comic books than realistic surgery templates. Conversely, the plants’ physical presence is enlarged through their transformation into ceramics. The Carnivores (2017) have organic forms; they are tubular, potbellied and sexually puffed up vessels, that find their juxtaposition in vile and often individually presented cachepots. Please enter. It’s worth the wait.
Text: Fiona McGovern
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