Two different fabrics are sewn together. They create tubes, arms, and endings that branch out thinly to the sides. While the white portions are opaque, the black portions are semi-transparent, almost like a mourning veil. In the late Middle Ages, the fashion for contrasting clothing was called Mi-Parti. First, the trousers were divided vertically into colorful stripes, then the whole body of clothing down to the leggings. In this case, it is less about a wearable piece of clothing than a textile that is lying on the ground – an unusual sack or a miniature sail. There are numerous cans of tomatoes hidden inside. They give the fabric body, a metallic filling to a soft exterior. The cans come (this is visible through the black fabric) from the Italian company Pelati Pomodoro. There are the usual ingredients. So attention is drawn to that which is rarely noticed and which is mixed together during cooking. Andy Warhol already ennobled the Campbell soup can by making it into art. Anne Sophie Berger, a graduate of the fashion design class at the Viennese College of Applied Arts and who currently lives in New York, concerns herself with clothing. She subjects them to a transforming transfer, a defamiliarization. She withholds a clear purpose or comprehensible use from her objects. Some are reminiscent of Franz Erhard Walther’s textile works, of which there is one in the evn collection, others on Robert Morris’s felt sculptures. Most of the time, however, Berger leaves the monumental format, the erect form. Rather, sculptures like hunch, that convey only feelings, create a premonition or a hint. These works seem to have been left behind, forgotten, accidental, maybe even overlooked or lifeless. The focus is always on the absence – the absence of the body and the act of arrangement. In a text, which is set like a poem, Berger writes: “I could tell you about the body that fills up this dress. A body that touched softly on silk.”

Thomas D. Trummer, 2019 (translation: Virginia Dellenbaugh)