Standing in the doorway of cloud nine · 2018
cotton paper, oil pastel, gouache, pigments, acrylemulsion, ≈ 123×102 cm
xerograph of a photograph from the series 'Rosy Beyelschmidt - Liverpool, April 1992' [stone tomb / Mates Condom Packs], 84×119 cm
xerograph of a photograph from the series 'Rosy Beyelschmidt - Liverpool, April 1992' [stone tomb / Mates Condom Packs], 84×119 cm
Against the deep black ground of the paper, a solitary foot emerges. It rests upon, presses against, or finds support in a cloud-like form that might equally be read as an asteroid, an island, or a fleeting piece of ground. Its footing remains uncertain. The figure lingers on the threshold between falling and floating—„standing in the doorway of cloud nine“. The paper itself is held to the wall only by magnets, reinforcing the sense of provisionality, as though the image could detach itself at any moment and quietly drift into the surrounding space.
The work opposite presents a xerographic reproduction of a photograph taken in April 1992 in a Liverpool cemetery. A stone tomb is encircled by numerous „Mates“ condom packs—remnants of a gesture whose meaning oscillates between care, protest, remembrance, and absence. What once promised protection has itself become a relic. The discarded packages remain like silent traces of lives that have already slipped beyond reach.
Together, the two works unfold a quiet meditation on transience and becoming. The body persists only in the form of a single foot; those who once stood at the grave are long gone, leaving behind only the marks of their presence. Between cloud and gravestone, ascent and mortality, the installation inhabits a space of in-betweenness—a place where memory is not preserved but continually reconstituted. „Standing in the Doorway of Cloud Nine“ does not describe a state of arrival, but the fleeting moment of inhabiting a threshold: between closeness and loss, between earth and sky, between what has passed and what continues to resonate.