„LoveToys“ - Markus Rösner (2011)

Big Jim I’m trapped. A Toy-Car at the manicure and a plastic bag of soldiers without a parachute on their leap in the dark. The colours of the revolution: black, red, white. With it a scale which shows ruthless every single detail. The objects of the pictures are separated from the background. This is art you like to touch.

The 3 pictures of Markus Rösner zoom into the world of these objects and brings memories of boring Sundays back in a time before Nintendo DS. Toys for boys with the promise that a man is a man and cars need  Bull bars. You could get addicted to this fantasy journey of aging, if there were not the nail polished fingers of a woman which has the scene totally under control. They how: a lovely toy which usually does not belong to this hand. This is where the toy story myths begin. Who is this woman? Will the toys be awakened as soon as she takes them out of her hands? Is Buzz Lightyear waiting at the corner to help his friends in the next picture? Possible not, even if the black stripes at the bottom and top part of the picture are giving us hope of a toy story. No, these are love toys. Objects of lust, obsession, defenceless committed to the acts and nail polish fantasies of his owner.

The late revenge of the little sister?

This is one of the possible questions, which Rösners photo-realistic art is asking. He creates with his theme a frame of past and future, of realisation and anticipation, of happy childhood and trauma. The mechanisms behind this: I get what I see, but it does not fit with my visual memories and personal experience. Observer, cavity and space start to swing. This is why Rösner stands only half in the traditional photo-realistic art. He is not only copying, he does not want to show the objectivity with which he is questioning our detection and reality from the view of the objects, Rösner creates a nightmare. He chooses one part of a clear detail, but does not elude to the identity of this detail. This is fuzziness in principal. The more you observe an object, the more complicated is the context. At the end there are more questions than answers. The offered scenes in Love Toys are looking first clear, but certainly bringing up mixed feelings in every observer. In Rösner´s work starts a new cycle. He draws people, works out documentaries in pictures, investigates the leisure park society and with his pistol out, his view shoots big egos. With Love Toys he enters the ground of an apprenticeship. The clip goes smaller, the picture bigger and objects are shown blow by blow. Reality becomes  illusion,  looking realistic, but still wrong. With this he comes very close to his colleagues Thomas Demand or Jeff Wall.

Painted photography or painted from pictures? For Rösner there is no one or the other. He associated photos with his obsessive paintings which no camera and photo filter would be able to do.

Should this Big Jim have a social life after work, he should disappear out of Rösner`s studio.

Who knows what will happen to him...

(Text: Ben Waltmann)