Global Soap / Asylum

"Global Soap" consists of a film installation and a series of photographic works based on the iconography of the soap opera. Analyzing the stereotypical structure of soap operas from all over the world, which follow a strict choreography, Rosefeldt has worked out an inventory of gestures, poses, situations and interpersonal constellations representing a myriad of concepts encountered while viewing the soaps. Appropriated directly from the soap operas, these ‘new icons of the media age’ as the artist calls them are at once highly contrived yet follow an iconography that has existed for centuries in the tradition of religious painting of the Renaissance.

"Asylum" is a series of nine films. Each of them presents a different group of emigrants by means of lyrical and fantastic narrations, which analyze stereotypical perceptions. Creating useless and almost surrealist actions, which amplify the associations we have between certain groups of population and some labour practices, Rosefeldt’s characters finally manage to triumph over the limitations of their difficult, but ridiculous situations, using their will and tenacity.

Julian Rosefeldt's works investigate the rituals, structures and absurdities of life. With a distant view and a precise talent for observation, similar to the objective methods of natural sciences, the german artist takes out persistently, from the daily reality, unconscious and also well known stereotypes.