Stairwell, soil, dolls, neon, broken glass
Approx. 900 m²
2002
Photo: Rolf Sturm
Überschreitung
Crossing/Transgression
[2] Along the long axis lie four rows each of six dolls on the floor of the isles in the sacred space of the Holy Ghost Church. Four on each side of each free standing pair of pillars; each pillar has a pair of twins. The original doll, which played an important roll in the artists childhood, takes in the row an unmistakably special position. It holds the origins while, the series, as it progresses, illustrates the destruction of the individual.
The other twenty three white bodies lie face down and, with heads turned slightly to the right and with their countenances turned away from the viewer, study the earth which lies directly before their eyes. Like shoots, fruit planted along an imaginary row, naked in the sense of exposed and laid bare, motherless, winter children, resistant against cold and loneliness, with an unbending posture but at the same time flexible people having fallen prey to second modern of unattached-ness. Above all they are beings of a serial world, one in which concept, breading, function and drive have so formed them that, because of their identity crisis, they can no longer look upon themselves in the mirror. One which, as the scanner reads the bar code, appears to repeat itself endlessly. A crossing is a crossing, each further crossing is a crossing of the crossing.
Franz Niehoff. Brücken – und Grenzen. Zur Installation "Überschreitung" von Dagmar Pachtner in Heiliggeist zu Landshut, in the exhibition catalogue, Pg. 32