Conceptual artist Margret Eicher (*1955 in Viersen, Germany) became known for her large-format tapestries, in which she combines the Baroque form of the narrative tapestry with the visual language of today’s information media. She processes found, public photographs of events in a way that questions their supposedly objective approach and truthful content. By means of artistic appropriation, trivial, everyday mass-media motifs are lent a sense of magical strangeness. Befitting the title Once Upon a Time (in Mass Media), this publication presents photographs of some of the artist’s most important works—taken outdoors against the historical backdrop of the Schwetzingen Castle gardens—and counteracts the sensual, poetic images with analytical essays on such themes as the consumption, reception, and constructed power of visual media worlds.

 

Exhibition schedule: Kunstmuseum Heidenheim, May, 2012 | Badisches Landesmuseum Karlsruhe, March–June, 2013 | Kunstmuseum Ahlen, May–June, 2014 | Angermuseum Erfurt, September, 2014 | Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, September, 2014