Panoptical Portraits
Panoptical Portraits, glazed ceramic, wood, paint
(…..) Also the result of a collaboration with a potter are Pascal Häusermann’s Panoptical Portraits, a series that channel Bertelli’s iconic 1933 portrait of Mussolini but give it a contemporary twist: the continuous profiles are of Europe’s contemporary right-wing leaders. But whereas Bertelli was keen to camouflage the ceramic quality of the material and instead gave it the metallic/machine look so glorified by the Futurists, Pascal prefers to accentuate his sculptures’ clay features and highlight their vessel-like form by painting them the beige of regular china and keeping their surface somewhat rough and rugged. The Panopticon, to which Pascal’s title refers, was an architectural solution to the prison crisis at the end of the 18th century. It offered a way to oversee the inmates from any point in the building without their knowledge, thus minimising the need for staff. Under the veil of “security”, in the last ten years right-wing politicians have pushed for more and more monitoring of the public sphere, which has led concerned citizens the world over to criticize the ever-more controlling governmental systems.
Olga Stefan