Nils Büttner / Sonja Eismann / Änne Söll

Justyna Koeke transforms children’s fantasies into wearable sculptures, fashion shows into performances. As a child, the artist, together with her sister, painted princesses and saints over and again, which she now carries over into reality as a collection of brilliantly coloured outfits full of whimsical details. The drawings are transposed as closely as possible, as if they were designs by renowned fashion designers. Today, the costumes come alive on the bodies of ladies of advancing years – for example, at the fashion shows for the Berlin Alternative Fashion Week or during the iconic construction of the new City Library in Stuttgart. A cosmos as humorous as it is surreal, in which childhood and fantasy effortlessly transcend the traditional boundaries of age.

The staged photographs before the sterile pool or the futuristic lift of an upscale senior citizens’ home neverthe- less raise questions: for example, on the relationship of age and youth in our society. Or on the subjective sensibility of age that has long since not always been in step with the social stereotypes of our time.

The publication, conceived by the communication designer Demian Bern together with the artist, presents the entire spectrum of the project over 152 pages. Beginning with an extensive photo gallery, the childlike innocent drawings from the late 1970s and early 1980s are introduced. Their counterpart is found at the end of the book, in photo- graphs of the models with fantasy costumes of their own choosing. In between, the art project unfolds before the reader in the reflection of images and texts by renowned photographers and authors.

The project of the Polish artist Justyna Koeke, which alternates between sculpture, performance and plays on the fashion world, combines artisanal virtuosity with a mature sense of the whimsical and humorous: an approach as exciting as it is diverse on the relationship between childhood dreams and the reality of age, in which unresolved issues of an increasingly aging society continue to resonate.

With essays by Prof Dr Nils Büttner (Academy of Fine Arts, Stuttgart/DE), Sonja Eismann (Missy Magazine) and Prof Dr Änne Söll (Ruhr-University Bochum/DE) and photographs by Nadine Bracht, David Spaeth, Michael Wittig and Daniela Wolf
 
With photos by David Spaeth