My Dirty Gods

Robert Gruber
Karl Karner
Kris Lemsalu
Markus Proschek
Anja Ronacher
Paul Wagner

They watch him from the shelves and the working desk, with their gouged out eyes, encrusted with poisonous verdigris. Their signifiers are broken-just murmur remains, their context abandoned and their use unknown (even if the bookshelves try to suggest the opposite: EVANS; PALACE OF MINOS, VOLUME I-IV…….). The idea that they once were of importance guarantees our appreciation, the thought of them being gewgaw or toys is annoying, even though they would have been entities in the eyes of a child (saying goodbye to each of my soft toys before going on holidays with the parents-not to the Punch-puppet my grandfather carved-always considered having an evil smile-the nose broken from being smashed to the wall-he lives in the darkness between wall and cupboard). Digging into the subconscious of his patients, Freud thought also to dig into the past of humanity, only to encounter his own expectations in the lowermost stratum, like scattered unfinished artefacts.

“My old and dirty gods in which you show so little interest are collaborating in the work as paper weights.”
Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fließ, 1st August 1889

curated by Markus Proschek