The German painter Tatjana Doll addresses the contemporary world objects, tools and technologies, images, symbols and signs as a huge reservoir of potential subjects. She developed a specific way of bridging the gap between art and everyday life by invading public spaces with monumental drawings and paintings on canvases. Whether the oversized images are physically installed on the streets, onto building façades, inside public and corporate edifices or the incursion is obtained by means of photomontage, the effect produced is always surprising. The close-ups on daily, banal and common objects as cars, trains and trucks, containers, rows of seats, fire extinguishers, road cones or cardboard cups not only direct them to the attention, but also renew the perception of such familiar things by turning them into expressing and uncanny “beings”. The painter uses simple and prompt drawing, straight acrylic and lack colours boldly applied thus creating fascinating contrasts between industrially manufactured real objects and their peculiar graphic representation.

- Technics Suisseknife
echoes a series of red, green and orange suitcases she exhibited in 2004 where similar radical close-up views are depicted to transform and enhance the banal and ordinary objects to independent and invading figures. Therefore, Doll brings further the magnifying framing technique developed by innovative painters such as Vincent Van Gogh and which has always been widely used in photography and cinema production. If the close-up approach allows the depiction of details, Tatjana Doll doesn't focus on such detailed rendering but keeps the objects' features rather schematic and slightly blurred. If the referential object is a pocket size one, used as a portable companion, this painted Swiss knife is large-scale oversized. The vivid primary red colour is recurrent in Doll's production and arouses a certain sense of alertness despite the total absence of urgency or narrative associated with the subject.



KS