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The Lobby: Crazy Hot Tub Installation (born to die II)

Leon Höllhumer, Crazy Hot Tub Installation (born to die II), 2024
Installation, mixed media
Variable dimensions
At the entrance to The Feast is a coffin in the basement that is built to fit an adult’s dimensions. The coffin is upholstered with denim, and filled with water bubbling like a whirlpool. Lying in the casket is a masked and dressed up doll, who looks as if it has stumbled in drunk: the whole scene resembles the remains of a party where the evening has become a little bit too colorful. Surrounding the coffin, there are several screens with fires blazing in a fireplace, giving the impression that the coffin is about to be cremated at any moment, or that the doll has landed directly in hell.
In his installations, Leon Höllhumer focuses on the staging of spaces that seem both unfinished and used. Viewers are invited to enter these incomplete worlds in which it’s never clear whether the narrative is yet to begin or half-completed. Höllhumer’s empty sets are often shown in conjunction with other sculptures, props and filmic works. While film as a medium is strongly associated with narrative, movement and emotions, film sets are places of preparation: they are temporary and often less glamorous than the finished scenes we see on screen. Höllhumer does not simply wish to tell an embellished story, but rather intends to present the space behind the abstract foil that supports a plot. In fact, he challenges the viewer to reconstruct the plot and fill in any missing gaps.
For this installation, Höllhumer uses materials that challenge the viewer both visually and emotionally. In this context, the coffin, an object traditionally associated with mourning and loss, is brought to a completely new, almost absurd level, which nevertheless questions conventional perceptions of transience. The whirlpool, which epitomizes pleasure and a good life, is reinterpreted as both a whimsical place and an oasis of final rest. The resulting tension inevitably forces viewers to confront their own ideas of life and death. The Crazy Hot Tub Installation (born to die II) by Leon Höllhumer is a provocative yet profound work of art that opens up a dialog between life, death and transience in a striking way, while also drawing on campy forms of luxury and their methods of display.
Adding another layer to his Gesamtkunstwerk, Höllhumer will use the exhibition to stage a performance: Lord Chesterfield bathes. Lord Chesterfield is a character still in the process of emergence: a nobleman with good manners, but deviant tendencies. Höllhumer’s characters are like companions: they do not appear exclusively in one work and then disappear, but are all part of an ensemble, reappearing again and again whenever an occasion allows for it.
Crazy Hot Tub Installation (born to die II), 2024
Installation, mixed media
Variable dimensions