Patricia Lambertus

Patricia Lambertus

Fantastische Tapetenwelten

For over ten years, Patricia Lambertus has been developing sprawling installations that suspend not only the laws of physical space, but also the rules of logic and reason. Not unlike the adventures of the titular hero of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, who plunges through an endless-seeming rabbit hole into a fantastic world full of outlandish whimsies and fabulous creatures, Lambertus’s panoramas transport the beholder into an unreal and sometimes eerie dream-world. For iconographic inspiration for her imaginary photocollages printed on wall panels, the artist delved into French pictorial tapestries from the early nineteenth century with their narrative sceneries and illusionistic landscape vistas. The same multifaceted quality and the play with the viewer’s imagination lend Lambertus’s fantastic interiors their allure. Unlike Alice in Wonderland, however, her visual creations do not altogether baffle the understanding, for they also encourage the viewer to actively engage with what they show. The nested spaces become echo chambers in which discourses of the present and the past undergo deconstruction while resonating in the here and now. 

This book is published on occasion of the exhibition Patricia Lambertus—zweijahrtausendfern in the pavilion of the Gerhard-Marcks-Haus, Bremen. With contributions by Arie Hartog, Astrid Silvia Schönhagen, and Michael Stoeber.