EXHIBITED PICTURES - BROKEN MUSES ZAGREB EXHIBITION

KRISTOFOR STANCOVIC GALLERY/ZAGREB CITY HALL, FEBRUARY 12 - FEBRUARY 25, 2007

Venue: Zagreb City Hall, Zagreb, Svetih Cirila i Metoda 5, 10 000 Zagreb, Croatia
Opening on February 15, 2007 at 19:00
Opening speeches by
Ms. Tatjana Holjevac, President of the Zagreb City Assembly
Mr. Peter Hinteregger, Member of the board, CFO, Siemens Croatia
Mr. Christian Ebner, Austrian cultural attaché in Zagreb on behalf of the Austrian Cultural Forum

BROKEN NOSE - OOSTENDE/BELGIUM 2006

A day on the Belgian coast was about to end when I discovered this mannequin in a quite unspectacular shop selling clothes for elderly women. It was a windy summer day, 9 p.m., the sun was about to disappear and this broken muse was looking at me with her adorable broken nose.

BROKEN MUSE MAURITIUS 2007

After seven years of taking pictures of broken muses, I discovered this mannequin on a recent trip to Mauritius. She reminded me a lot of the original broken muses picture that I have taken in Philadelphia. Smashed and stuck together with a piece of tape she is still looking into a bright future…

BROKEN MUSES - PHILADELPHIA 2000

This is the original “broken muses” picure, the one that gave the series that I have been building up since its name. I took it in Little Italy in Philadelphia in the US. The mannequins were draped outside of a shop selling scarfs, caps and bonnets.

BROKEN LIPS - MAURITIUS 2007

A mannequin with beautiful eyes and an exfoliating corner of her mouth. What seems to be a contradiction for her beauty makes her – according to me – even more attractive.

BRUISED - BRUSSELS 2006

I found this muse in the window of a a second hand shop in Brussels. She is bruised, scratched but nevertheless she displays her fur hat in the most elegant way.

NEW YORK TRINITY - NEW YORK 2005

A well known shop for an even more well known designer brand in the middle of SOHO in New York always catches my attention when I happen to walk by. Those mannequins show perfection, don’t they, and at the same time how boring perfection can be.

CHRISTINE - URUGUAY 2006

I took the hydrofoil from Buenos Aires over the Rio de la Plata to Colonia del Sacaramento in Uruguay. There I found this stunning and colorful muse that reminded me of a distant friend of mine, Christine.

ORANGE TRINITY - MAURITIUS 2007

Mauritius is advertised as paradise. Mark Twain even said that “Mauritius was made first and then heaven was copied from it”. Well, that could probably also be said for my personal broken muses heaven; I found many of them in Mauritius.

RED LIGHTS AND SHADE - MADRID 2006

Madrid in late autumn 2006. During a stunningly beautiful day around midday I saw these red haired muse in front of a clothes shop. I love light and shade and together with her red hair I thought she makes an inspiring red lights and shade muse.

VEIL - BUENOS AIRES 2006

Walking through Buenos Aires is a delight. San Telmo is one of the oldest parts of the city. It is architectonically interesting but also full of little shops, restaurants and tango clubs. I found this mannequin in an antiques shop there.

FADING AWAY - NAMUR/BELGIUM 2004

Namur in the heart of Belgium’s Brabant region is a nice little city with medieval streets. One shop had just put out their sales signs – on naked mannequins. I captured the reflection of the building on the opposite side of the road in the shop window – making the mannequin fading away.

DEVILINA - GENT/BELGIUM 2006

I found this muse with her horns in a carnival supplies shop in Gent. I thought that the contradiction between her sad and thoughtful face and those horns was very striking.

BRIDE - PARIS 2002

A hidden shop on one of Paris’ largest antiques markets I found this bride, wearing an old and much worn wedding dress. Has she been like that for all of her life, left behind while wearing her wedding dress?

GLAMOUR - PARIS 2004

I found this proud made up mannequin in a passageway in Paris – on a huge permanent antiques market to be more precise. It was fixed with a string so that it would not fall over.

SHUT UP - BRUSSELS 2006

Shut up is a picture that I took during the winter sales in early 2006 in an expensive Brussels city center boutique. The shopkeeper decided to display the mannequins naked, disassembled, just placed on and inside of empty boxes that were sealed with this “shut-up” tape. The shop closed sown soon after the sales.

PLAYING CARDS - NEW YORK 2005

When walking through New York’s SOHO I saw this advertisement. Whether it was for Whiskey or Scotch or any other beverage I have forgotten meanwhile – what remained is this picture that was painted on a wall there. The picture was huge, I think at least 7 meters high.

MARADONNA - BUENOS AIRES 2006

Next to a news stand in Buenos Aires I found this creatively designed head showing next to Maradonna Argentina’s president Kirchner and probably some other personalities.

OPATIJA MUSE - OPATIJA/CROATIA 2006

I spent Easter time 2006 in the pouring rain in Opatija when all of a sudden I discovered that proud muse – on display in front of shop selling t-shirts and souvenirs.

SHUT UP BUENOS AIRES - 2006

This mannequin was placed as a “guard” in front of a paid public parking place in Buenos Aires’ city center. Obviously she had spoken too much and was forced to remain silent forever after.

BRUSSELS TRINITY - BRUSSELS 2006

Three mannequins of the 1980ies. This “trinity” picture was taken on a fleamarket on Brussel’s Place au Jeu des Balles, showing how fast ideas and “ideals” of beauty change.
For me fleamarkets are one of the most charming and interesting places of a city.

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