OBSESSION – Maciej Toporowicz

Obsession The video and photographic installation of the Polish artist Maciej Toporowicz (born 1958) elaborates on the connection between German sculpture and architecture of the 1930s to the American commercial aesthetics of the 1990s. The black & white photographs and video projections punctuated by music delicately portray the relation of the ideal images of people of our own time to the superhuman ideals of Fascism. Toporowicz combines the stylish logos of the American Calvin Klein brand – Eternity, Obsession, Escape – to photographs of sculpture and architecture of the Nazi era and to details of incinerators and heaps of personal objects.

In the video, excerpts from films by Leni Riefenstahl, Viscount, Pasolini and Calvin Klein perfume advertisements are set to the magical music of Peter Greeneway’s film Chef, Thief, Wife and Lover. The black and white video projection juxtaposes the beautiful models in the commercials with the characters in the Nazi films. The themes of power and desire that recur in Nazi fantasies are also present in contemporary cosmetics and fashion advertising. In black and white photographs, Toporowicz combines monumental works by Third Reich sculptors and architects, and details from the concentration camps to stylish brands.

The installation subtly explores the relationship between the human ideal of our time and the superhuman ideals of fascism. Drawing on the visual code of advertising, OBSESSION strikingly links the contemporary search for beauty and innocence with Nazi utopias of physical virility and a clean society.

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The exhibition will be accompanied by a lecture by author Yrsa Stenius entitled My Man – Architect Albert Speer, which will explore the dual personality and life of Albert Speer, Hitler’s court architect and Minister of Armaments. Art Museum Lecture Hall, Wednesday 5 April at 18.30.

There is no ESCAPE from OBSESSION to ETERNITY

Translated with DeepL.com