The walls of the Klompching Gallery bare the photographs of renowned Swiss artist Cornelia Hediger. Each rich and colorfully fragmented photograph in the “Doppelgänger” exhibition carries a narrative. The carefully crafted scenarios are comically shocking while simultaneously psychological. Hediger plays the role of the woman in all the works struggling “between the conscious and the unconscious”. The whimsy of brightly patterned dresses and fanciful embellishments are off set by a sense of eeriness and sorrow. The broken woman appears to be in a state of emotional terror yet the luscious hues of her surroundings create a jovial façade for the surface.
In Doppelganger 11/05 one woman on the left holds a cheerful doll’s head in front of her face masking her melancholy. The other is trapped in a bird’s cage screaming. Of course both are the same person battling an internal trauma. The artist is making a statement about the tendency to hide behind a public image to avoid signs of depression. Despite the weighty subject matter the work presents a humorous side to these sad emotions. Perhaps the message is that eventually we all stop and laugh at the past.
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