Layers#I / Layers#II 2022
prints on textil, entire 10 x 1,40m;
silver leave on wall plaster
Layered, Altes Badehaus Mainz-Kostheim

Through Ulrike's invitation for a joint exhibition, I got to know this wonderful place, the Old Bathhouse. It is a building with different traces of origin, use and repairs that interlock with and into stories. The listed house from the 1920s has never been given a basic renovation.
With photographs of the garden staged like bath towels on a clothesline, I draw attention to the abandoned garden. For a long time after the building was closed, it was a refuge for the former bath attendant.
In the stairwell, I apply silver leaf to faulty and repaired areas in the wall plaster. One can speculate which of the historic or new levels of wall coatings will one day be deemed worthy of preservation by the monument protection authorities. Meanwhile, the silver is oxidising, gradually acquiring an orange-copper patina and becoming part of the building's readable history.
The House served as a public bath for working-class families in Mainz-Kostheim until the 1960s. Today, a singing club, a boxing club and the artist Ulrike Lange use the premises.