TOBIAS SPICHTIG, Die Matratzen
installation view at Jan Kaps, Cologne
image courtesy Jan Kaps, Cologne

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Die Matratzen was an exhibition by TOBIAS SPICHTIG presented at Jan Kaps in Cologne, which just closed a few days ago. As its title implies, an important part of the show consisted of mattresses that paved the entire first room of the exhibition space. The mattresses appeared covered with different printless bed linens which, according to the press release, have been provided by SPICHTIG‘s friends.

This installation appeared familiar yet nevertheless it gave us a sense of absence, instability and perversion : here the mattresses and their bed linens became co-opted things like a fusion of representation (in the sense that they are portraits of his friends who once inhabited them), abstraction as well as abjection thanks to the fact that the viewers had to walk on them to see the entire exhibition. Die Matratzen was an exhibition about the body, where the body never appears.