" Il n'est, en effet, pas possible de ne pas connaître les images des autres. La question est de savoir comment on y réagit.'
Christa Dichgans (1940 - 2018) is a German artist who questions the relationship between the act of being and objects in the context of mass consumption. Various, everyday objects (clothes, toys, food) are rendered abstruse, piled up in the foreground of the canvas like pop vanities, symbols existing only at their own face value, emptied of their symbolic significance. Yet the choice of objects is never random: children’s toys which seem to have been left there, consigned to immobility, contrasts with their initial goal which is to encourage activity and learning.
This dialogue between motif and painting shows how Dichgans doesn’t limit herself to simply criticizing overconsumption but goes further encouraging the public to analyze it.
From 1984 to 1988, she was the assistant Georg Baselitz, from whom she later was inspired by, when remixing her early works. At the same time, Christa Dichgans also met A.R. Penck. Her artistic approach evolved, and she incorporated symbols and collages into her work.