The installation “Trophy Room” conceived for the project space of the Kunsthalle Wien is a fresh take on the fantasies and mythologies of subjugation and horror, issues that William Pope.L has with wit and paradoxical interventions formulated and reformulated in his performances, poetry, objects, and installations in recent years. The main question is whose fantasy is it?
The project space will become a display room of souvenirs mounted on the wall; exotic (stuffed) animals from the dark continent covered in a cascade of peanut butter – giraffes and elephants, but also rabbits – will be dissected, gutted, laid bare to the eyes of the participant, and left to oxidize – albeit in a corridor installed especially for this purpose, into which one enters like a fun house through low doorways and whose content is hidden behind a wall, to be viewed, like a peep show, voyeuristically through small holes filled with eyeglass lenses…
William Pope.L (*1955) lives and works in the USA. He a.o. participated in the Whitney Biennial 2002.
Curator: Sabine Folie
In occasion of the exhibition a catalogue will be published in German/English, containing an interview with William Pope.L conducted by Gerald Matt and a text by Sabine Folie.