Installation at Museum Ludwig
The paintings of Lucy McKenzie show how we can envisage an approach to painting today that goes beyond the purely aesthetic. Her large canvases, arranged within the space like a stage set, depict interiors that refer to 19th-century decor designs.
In the large top-lit gallery at Museum Ludwig, the artist works a number of such canvases with trompe l'oeil images into an almost seven metre long and eight metre tall wooden construction that can be accessed from both the upper balcony and the exhibition space. In this way, the tension that generates in McKenzie's work between the applied and the fine arts, between drawing and painting, draft and almost life-size canvas is further intensified. McKenzie also demonstrates with this a logical consequence of her examination art and its social relevance, a question that was particularly important to the Arts and Crafts movement in the 19th and early 20th century. For McKenzie, who was born in 1977, this also implicates the notion of the artist as worker, who appears in a self-imposed uniform suited to practical needs.
Lucy McKenzie was born in 1977 in Glasgow where she still lives. She studied at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, Dundee and at Karlsruhe Kunst Akademie, Germany. McKenzie's solo exhibitions include 'If It Moves, Kiss It' at Galerie Christian Nagel, Berlin (2002) and 'Brian Eno' at NAK Aachen (2003).
Lucy McKenzie
Until 26 July
Museum Ludwig
Bischofsgartenstraße 1
D-50667 Cologne
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