Social life transformation/social distancing

"In the midst of a life that must go on, it has become lonely. Leaden seems to be every effort to keep in touch. Distance is a general civic duty..."

This is the verbal attempt to describe the current situation.

The social distancing ordered by the authorities in many countries forms the starting point of the work. The approach is to transport the consternation and mood in this unprecedented situation as an installation into a work of visual art. To make the current soul space visually experienceable: to trace this fear, loneliness, alienation, which is everywhere in the air.

Michael Gatzke got himself 9 dolls and worked on them intensively. As a result of the design and painting process, the dolls lost their little dresses and the childishly kitschy. They now look more androgynous, more lifelike and affected. You could also say "more creative". He presents the 9 figures on small metal beds. Between these the currently omnipresent distance is kept.

The aim of Michael Gatzke's installation is to make the social distance created by the Corona epidemic "tangible". It is the attempt to form the perception of the surreal situation into a three-dimensional image in which viewers find themselves. In doing so, the work may well evoke feelings, but at the same time it should also remain a piece of unapproachable and strange, i.e. not be perceived as a romantic fairy tale. For human life is always in parts a tragedy and yes, subject to absurdity. I have tried to grasp the fatal and tragic condition inherent in social distancing on the one hand, and to extract an artistic-ironic component from the forced distancing on the other.