Critical textIsadora Vogt

Isadora Vogt (b. 1992, Zurich) investigates themes like the identity and structures of power through painting, drawing, and collage. Her work incorporates a range of different visual references, from folklore to fables, popular culture to archival materials, such as stationery and magazine clippings.

The artist’s research focuses on the analysis of educational narratives connected with childhood, in an attempt to unmask the capitalist ideals transmitted through the messages aimed at children, which encourage them to assign priority to work and material wealth as opposed to play. Her works present apparently innocent scenes that suddenly take on sinister overtones.

Female figures are often at centre stage, revealing a different spectrum of femininity. Vogt’s recent production concentrates on images of women, mainly burlesque performers from the 1920s and 1930s, portrayed in everyday situations, often in a voyeuristic tone, to explore themes of eroticism and power dynamics. By contrast, a recurring motif is the prototype of a man, whose identity as a hunter or as someone hiding remains ambiguous. The application of pasty paint, recreating a patina that gives the pieces a timeless atmosphere, reminds us of the image of an old painting hanging in a tavern, where the primary colours gradually face, wrapped in a grey veil. These introspective works reveal the latent fears and power dynamics in what is generally perceived as normal in western culture.

At Present Future, Vogt creates a free juxtaposition of paintings and collages, as happens in the production of these works when they are still in the artist’s studio, with the idea of illustrating and mirroring her own creative process through the set-up of the exhibition.