Cooperation with Bertram Schrecklich.
The idea of creating art with ironing beads emerged nearly two years ago, in collaboration with our daughter Gloria. However, other art projects, professional commitments, and family obligations initially delayed its realization.
This crafting medium, popular among children, appealed to us for its associative, visual, and nostalgic qualities. Yet, the practical execution turned out to be more challenging than expected. It required a steady hand, meticulous attention to detail, and above all, a keen sense of color. Ironing beads have not played a significant role in the art world, which allows the medium to be considered unburdened by precedent in this context. A major reason for this is the inherent limitations of the medium: the pegboard shapes, bead placement, and bead size and color are all standardized and restricted, making highly detailed depictions nearly impossible. Thus, our goal with the bead artworks was not exact replication but rather an approach that captured the essence of the original compositions in terms of color and layout.
Given the association of ironing beads with children's crafts, we sought to explore and question the tension between the worlds of children and adults. We selected ten motifs for this purpose—images chosen for their controversial, polarizing, or provocative nature, or for their symbolic significance. These included portraits of notable political figures, religious leaders, historical personalities, depictions of historical events, scandalous artworks, life-denying weapons of mass destruction, and even crude pornography. Many of these themes and images have been censored or restricted in different times and places. Yet, it is often this repression that gives these subjects the allure of the forbidden, embedding them deeply in collective memory, to the point where even a few visual clues suffice to identify the motif. Our pixelated ironing bead depictions highlight this phenomenon. The more familiar the motif is to the viewer, the more recognizable it remains despite distortion.
To juxtapose these motifs symbolizing the adult world and its associated responsibilities, we included a single morally and ideologically uncontroversial depiction reflecting the innocence, naivety, and vulnerability of childhood. After careful consideration, we chose a manga-inspired work titled "Kako Kurai Panics". Manga, particularly through its use of facial expressions, serves as a powerful narrative tool to convey the emotional and mental states of its characters. Close-ups of faces deserve special attention, as they vividly communicate dependency and the need for trustworthy, compassionate adult figures in an increasingly complex world.
The unique properties of the medium compelled us to simplify the representation of complex motifs significantly, resulting in an aesthetic best described as pixelation. By choosing motifs that are not inherently child-friendly, we were able to use the medium's limitations to our advantage, effectively "censoring" vulgar or violent imagery while still leaving room for imaginative interpretation. This transformation allowed us to turn a potential shortcoming into an asset. The pixelation not only added an element of mystique and abstraction but also introduced a participatory aspect, as viewers are invited to decipher the underlying images.
To enable viewers to verify their interpretations of the pixelated depictions, we incorporated QR code technology. Scanning the QR codes links the analog ironing bead images to their original, unpixelated counterparts, offering a deeper engagement with the work.
Winter 2019/2020