Sometimes, in the work of German-Danish artist Christian Lemmerz, a “child’s christening is symbolised with a baptismal font in white marble with the inside shaped as a baby coffin….[A] wet grave filled with Kölner Wasser, to dampen the stench.”
In “Corpus Delicti” at the Copenhagen branch of Gallery Faurschou, the lifesource is in the details. The gallery has posted a slide show of the dark, luminous exhibition.
One response
How odd a cultural moment when something that I assume is meant to be transgressive is actually circling around an orthodox Christian concept. Specifically, we understand that when we are baptized it is as if we are going down to the grave with Jesus (lowered into the water), only to come back out of it, reborn. In the New Testament, Paul’s Letter to the Romans, chapter 6, it’s all laid out. I’ll grant there’s some ambiguity built into the coffin image, b/c the font isn’t meant to be solely one sided, but rather double-sided, ying and yang sort of deal, about death and life, but still…
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