MARGRET EICHER

EUR 23,000 + VAT

La Grande Bouffe, 2019

Digital collage, fabric 

280 x 371 cm

About this work

A dozen figures are framed in an architectural setting which doubles as a video game console. And the title does refer to a game of sorts: the competitive gourmand suicide pact of Marco Ferreri’s 1973 film in which four men compete to out-eat each other to death. But the meat in this feast, evidently extracted from classic still life paintings, hardly appeals in its present state. And the women seem in control of this mash-up of food, sex, and death in which the animal appears as the projection of all human desires. 

MARGRET EICHER BIOGRAPHY

Margret Eicher (born Viersen, Germany 1955) coined the term ‘Copy Collage’ for her way of extracting reproductions from various contemporary contexts – fashion, advertising, art, glamour – and putting them together on a computer to form large patterns inspired by art history. These combinations are sent to the Jacquard Tapestry looms in Belgium to become large tapestries which Harald Kunde has called ‘a maelstrom of hybrid seduction’. By that means, the image carrier historically associated with courtly representation and mythological legitimation of the ruling families, is applied to the celebrity culture of our times: the traditional, heavy and static meets the superficial, lightweight and fast-moving.