Condom Project

Lutz Matschke DGPh

Fulbright Commission Stipendium am International Center of Photography I.C.P. in New York.

CONDOM PROJECT, NEW YORK, WINTER 2001
ARTIST STATEMENT

A PHOTOGRAPHIC PORTFOLIO ABOUT BOUNDARIES OF PERCEPTION, CLOSENESS AND MEANING

Condoms left the dark pharmacy drawers and won their bright space in supermarket shelves, in the same way they participate openly in my sexual daily life.

Although manufacturers define them as just for having safe fun, every time I watch one of these „forensic proofs of love“ a great halo of intensity surrounds them. I find them untouchable, rejectable and frightening, but visually attractive at the same time.

Since they are usually shown unused in a ring shape, more than showing their correspondence to my body, this body of work intends to expand condoms’ oneiric capacity, firing fantasies about the implications of a sexual relationship. They are displayed as a visible evidence but, with its layout as diptychs and triptychs, stand for the imaginary of shared intimacy with its different interpretations and expectations.

Condoms used to be shown as a personal shelter, as an extension of our own and others’ lives. I would rather conceive them as little stages, for what the French poet Georges Battaille declared as the intimate act of love as a „petite mort“.

Lutz Matschke New York, June 2001