Solace

Judith Tucker

 

For several years my paintings and drawings have employed the metaphor of the border between land and sea, offering as it does possibilities of passage, displacement, arrivals and departures: change. I am now looking at temporary structures in relation to the landscape, I have become fascinated by the ubiquitous Strandkörbe: beach-baskets. They appear as an accessory or parergon of the pre-war photographs; their image is synonymous with the beaches of North Germany. Although they do not set out any formal boundaries of their own, in being situated on a beach they are located on the boundary between land and sea. These hybrids between beach hut and deck chair offer the possibility of a momentary shelter, yet standing empty on the beach they have a melancholy timbre. These structures fluctuate between offering a sense of being places of protection and in their very deficiency becoming almost mawkish ciphers of vulnerability. This work explores the risk of an intimate space within the basket contiguous with the open expanse beyond.