Caterina Maderna

Eva Köstner works with film and video, objects and drawing.

Her different production methods, however, do not result in isolated, closed-off worlds, rather they intertwine, come together in an unbroken, homogenous totality. The aura of her films is to be found concentrated in many objects; her drawings bring it to life in the context of complex images.

In terms of theory, she has been concerned over several years with the theme of ‘Utopia’ – as opposed to ‘Vision’ – which she, with Jacques Derrida, understands as firmly anchored in the present, in the structures of human society. She does not create an illusionistic, ‘better’ world, that lies in a far-off, possibly never present future; rather she sharpens our view of the ‘now’, our lived world, our patterns of behaviour, habits, requisites and rituals. She questions the cultural systems created by humans after their own drive to impart a deeper meaning to their existence, to attain greater security in their condition and role in society. She traces the nature of these systems, and points out their shadow sides and dangers, where all too rigid boundaries or mechanistic rules mutate to senseless patterns which, while suggesting security, mutate however to high, apparently insurmountable prison walls; a rigid blockade which allows no admittance to freedom of thought and action, to inventive creativity.

Notwithstanding the artist’s interest in philosophical, sociological, literary and theoretical concepts in art, and models of human life partnerships, her work certainly does not take us into the distanced conforms of theoretical constructs or purely intellectual test arrangements. Reflections of the American social and cultural theorist, Richard Sennett, who exposed the fashionable term, ‘flexibility’, as a requirement for purely economic success in line with global capitalism, and denounced its consequent accompanying loss of necessary human constants, find an entry in to her work, for example in a performance over several days in which voluntary test subjects, ‘chained’ together by crocheted silver threads, experienced in the literal sense of the word, a binding with each other. The agenda of the so-called ‘Bauhaus’ is mirrored in technoid constructions of impressively clear architectural beauty, which, in harmonious combination with nature, comprise the world of her drawn ‘heroines’. In the complex, purely physical convergence of three young women in ‘Video 4’ we are made conscious in a very sensual manner of the tentative yet increasingly intensive, characteristically human search for new possibilities and forms of interactive communication beyond all known systems and trusted rules of play. A traditional facet of the female role model takes on the form of a bed jacket in 'Bettjacke', its outer surface promising protection through its softly quilted padding, its inside studded with pointed needles; the painful armour in the childlike casing.

Eva Köstner’s visualised utopias always address us in a sensual language whose expressiveness and purposefulness construct them immediately in the artistic aesthetic of their production. Idea and form, thought and emotion build a symbiotic connection that affects us, without diversion, on the directly accessible level of pure perception. The message of the works contains no superficial, striking ‘truths’. No ideological indoctrination is presented. They invite rather, and always with a many-layered subtlety, a pause, amazement, meditation. Apparent extremes engender in their combination a tension that one can not draw oneself away from. Form and content ambivalences disturb our perceptive and associative habits and consequently open up new perspectives and possibilities.

Eva Köstner sees these, above all, in the creative potential of mankind itself. In its occasionally overwhelming, yet ultimately inextinguishable longing for freedom. In its ability to question all that is already established, in its inborn pleasure in play. The artist herself, often with a wink, consciously takes part in this game. In her drawings we can smile at some of the actions of her equally gentle-unperturbed and dignified-imperturbable, and dangerous-destructive heroines; in her object series, ‘Strapse für Geweihe’ (Suspenders for Antlers) the very special male aura of hunting- and study rooms is in a grotesque yet humorous way, is nailed to the wall like a trophy; in ‘Video 5, Hitchcocks Vorhang’ (Hitchcock’s Curtain), she unsettles the emotions and associations that are coupled with our perceptions in to mysterious confusion; in her lately completed letter animation, ‘ Habe meine Identität in einem label…’ (‘Have my identity in a label…’), the numerous word- and thought clichés of our style- and consumer-oriented society reveal equally, with pleasure, its ridiculousness, and with a painful intensity, its consequent loss of authenticity and real individuality.

For Eva Köstner, Mankind stands always at the centre. She addresses it with an incorruptibly precise, thereby however an always searchingly subtle gift for observation that is free of any accusation. In the intimate, trusting gestural language of the couples, ‘Eveline & Wolfgang, Cocco & Marianne’ in ‘Video 6’, we see again ourselves, the protection of our family ties, and the actually perceptible messages of our meaningful, ritual actions to and with one another. In our ‘to be human’, our most precious abilities – the given possibility to choose different ways, the freedom to decide and the strength to repeatedly create new meaningful systems – are revealed. Eva Köstner’s utopias, unbreakably anchored in our being, promise more than just hope.