Dominique Lanz

About

I am an amateur cultural anthropologist who looks at what we cast off, I illuminate the surreal in the seemingly mundane, and I take absolute pleasure in creating. My subjects are inherently linked to the medium of textiles: repulsion and desire, overabundance and material obsession, and intertwined man-made and nature. I transform unsellable second-hand and deadstock fabrics into works. Experimentation, material poetry and association lie at the core of my practice.

In hyper-individualistic world, where we spend more and more time online, the flat, digital image becomes all-important, setting off an irresistible urge to buy. It has exacerbated overconsumption, the misconduct of the fast fashion industry and the devaluation of textiles. This is why with my works, I formulate a graspable material-version of what fabrics, that have first been encountered in an online shop, look like after the internet, and even after they have been disposed. Nevertheless, I want to elicit a feeling beyond guilt in the viewer – my eccentric objects are allowing a moment of pause, and a different perspective, to look and understand the times we are living in, as we live it.

To do that, I use analogue and digital processes, I layer, stack, cut and glue masses of them together, include digital print imagery and screen print glitch. I aim to leave room for serendipity, as following a fixed plan is a form of aggression. Creating a pure, finished form is a lie that we are being told too often. Why should I lie to you too?

Our (textile) waste is the ideal postmodern metaphor, in which so-called high culture (mulberry silk fabric) and low culture (a spiderman bedsheet with low thread-count) collide. A conglomerate of ready-mades, my fabric works bring forgotten junk back into our consciousness. The objects encourage the viewer to walk around them, and counter the idea that everything should be graspable to us within an instant.