Home Sweet Home. Make yourselves comfortable!
Instant Decorating is a parody of the home as a safe haven. Retreating into one’s own four walls becomes the strategy of the individualized and isolated subject, navigating the aftershocks of the pandemic and a dystopian global reality shaped by daily war reports, and the compounding effects of late capitalism, environmental crisis, and rising fascism. The result: escape into the private sphere – where, supposedly, everything remains under control, everything in perfect order. With charm and finesse, interior and identity can be endlessly rearranged, curated, and restaged. The blinds are down, the daylight lamp switched on, filtering out the negative aura of the outside world, lest the nervous system and limited capacities become overwhelmed. The apartment becomes a genuine wellness retreat; thanks to online shopping and the gadgetization of everyday life, there are no more limits to the optimization of hobby and home. Feel safe already?
Tony Franz plays with associations. Themes such as cultivated and stylized nature, technologized marijuana cultivation, Canadian wildfires, the style dictatorship of interior design magazines, kitsch, and the opulence of baroque floral paintings oscillate between presence and absence. Only their traces remain visible.
In his artistic practice, Franz explores archetypes of mediated imagery. A self-declared “absolute TV kid,” he draws from the post-digital collective memory – a regurgitating time machine that reanimates analog and digital content alike, returning it as quote, ghost, or hybrid of itself. The internet doesn’t forget. Apparent contradictions from pop culture and internet niches resurface in his oeuvre, morphing into Frankensteinian palimpsests or collages. Text, image, and object converge in a harmonious dissonance of nostalgic banality and biting irony. author Ricarda Hauswaldt