Artists’ Conquest

Curators: Dr. Dirk Welich (director of the Pillnitz Castle Museum), Thomas A. Geisler (director of the Museum of Decorative Arts Dresden).

Artists Margret Eicher, Luzia Simons, Rebecca Stevenson and Myriam Thyes “conquer” the historic rooms and museum displays in both the Museum of Decorative Arts and the Castle Museum. The four artists of international origin (Germany, Brazil, Great Britain, Switzerland) respond to the historic interiors of the three palaces and the objects held in the collections. In so doing, their works explore the ideas and imagery of baroque exuberance and exotic decadence from a contemporary perspective. For the presentation in Pillnitz Palace, new works were created in response to the chinoiserie style of the architecture and in reference to the garden flora. In total, around 30 works of art can be seen as interventions distributed over all three locations (Riverside Palace, Hillside Palace, New Palace) of Pillnitz Palace.

Thyes’s animation  Trisolaris Chinoiserie derives from the chinoiserie frescoes on the Hillside Palace of Pillnitz Castle. Fragments of these appear on revolving globes, like heavenly spheres. The three globes allude to the science fiction trilogy Trisolaris by Cixin Liu. Motifs from the frescoes come adrift from the “planets” and morph into contemporary imagery from China, giving rise to a modern “chinoiserie”. – Her film still series Gallery of Heroic Women is placed above busts of former rulers of Saxony.