Hilde Onis
Concordia763 Toy Cars & 45 kg of sweet, bitter adolescense
“I try to aim for colorful work that leaves a sour taste as you come closer and start to understand what it might be about. I translate personal memories into (mostly) moving installations where playful childhood has a bitter edge.”
While looking at ‘763 Toy Cars’, the viewer walks into a room and sees a playpen overflowing with hundreds of bright yellow toy cars. As his distance to the sculpture decreases, they start to look more and more like distorted car wrecks. Through a movement sensor the playpen starts shaking and rattling, the ceramic toy cars rubbing against each other making a subtle but slightly uncomfortable sound.
The playpen, the environment that belongs to the child, can be seen as a cage as well as a safety measure. Together with the toy cars, it transforms into an uncomfortable burden In ’45 kg of sweet, bitter adolescense’, a 45kg ceramic kiddie pool is sitting on a colourful group of drinking straws held together by a tight strap. The swimming pool is filled with lemonade. In the middle of the pool a plastic toy house serves as a soda fountain. This seemingly pure glorification of childhood appears to give the feeling that something just isn’t right. The blood-red lemonade spreads a sour smell around the room, creating a rancid sticky stain around the work as the exhibition progresses.