Gideon Kiefer (°1970, Belgium) truly masters the figurative visual language. This grants him the opportunity to create a world from his unique point of view, filled with intimate and peculiar scenes where a symbiosis is formed by reality and the imaginary. Written personal reflections or side-miniatures, are drawn onto the insides of old book covers, which provides his work with a certain tactility while it reveals some of the intriguing content hidden in each drawing.
Throughout his oeuvre, Kiefer’s work revolves around his own personal memories and more specific, distrust towards the accuracy of these memories. Systematically, this intimate aspect is combined with sociological, political and ecological themes, which are depicted in a very symbolic and metaphorical manner. The impendent feeling of doom due to the depletion of natural sources and global warming is very much present in this series as well as it was in previous work where metaphors of vaults inspired by the global seed bank in Spitsbergen, monumental birds, disproportional bees and fragile poles supporting excessive dams, depicted Kiefer’s anxieties towards our contemporary ecological situation.
Fiddling While Rome Burns
Fiddling While Rome Burns | Installation view, Galerie Martin Kudlek, Cologne | photo © Paulo dos Santos
Fiddling While Rome Burns
Fiddling While Rome Burns | Installation view, Galerie Martin Kudlek, Cologne | photo © Paulo dos Santos
