Luci D. Dreams of Flying

In Luci D. Dreams of Flying, amidst butterfly wings and extinct birds, myths and stories from the past, Rike Droescher reinvents and narrates a tale as ancient as the world: the human desire to fly. She delves into the fissures and cracks of an anthropocentric world, with her works emerging as a constellation of images intruding into one another, as remnants of a fantastical anthropology.

The exhibition unfolds as a sequence of Luci D.’s dream. By shaping into tangible form the visions of this fictional character, the artist explores the multifaceted bird-flight archetype and weaves a narrative of desires, utopias, and fantasies ultimately colliding with failure, fall, and loss. Each work acts as a poetic hyper-text, where the artist hides references or clues to follow Luci D. through her dream, adopting her perspective akin to a movie’s point-of-view shot. The titles of the works themselves serve as guide for the multiple scenarios of Luci’s dream, as if marking the acts of a theatre performance.

The work Luci D. Dreams of Flying opens the story with bizarre footwear — shoes with heels shaped like bird claws. Through this, the artist engages with a zoomorphic fantasy and imaginary hybridizations between humans and birds, reinterpreting a series of literary references.

Scene from Above: A Cloud, a Cuckoo, Land transports Luci D. to Cloud-cuckoo-land, the city of clouds and birds from Aristophanes’ Greek comedy, founded on an agreement between humans and birds seeking a better life between sky and earth. The work resembles a bed of clouds, upon which are placed ceramic reproductions of newspaper pages glazed and printed by the artist with transcription of the sounds used by birdwatchers to memorize and recognize bird songs.

In Zenith: Way Over My Head. How on Earth Could I Fall?, Luci D. meets Icarus, or rather what remains of him after his fall: feathers on the ground and broken wings are the last traces of the reckless attempt to reach the sun. In a flash, the fantastical scenario and the peaceful utopia of Cloud-cuckoo-land shatter, bringing Luci D. back to earth. Here, streetlamps are the sun. Here, butterflies and moths perish, confused and deceived. Droescher interrupts the more imaginative chapter of the story, creating a friction between the dream and reality, illusion and disillusionment. Look What I Have Done, Look What I Can Do (Recreation of Martha) marks a harsh return to reality. The sculpture functions as a shadow theater, with two hands forming the profile of a bird. Through the art of shadow play, the artist ironically assumes the role of a demiurge: employing eggshell powder and light, she evokes and artificially reproduces Martha, the last known passenger pigeon of its species, which died in 1914 at the Cincinnati Zoo.

It is said that in a lucid dream, the dreamers are aware that they’re dreaming, that everything is more vivid and the laws of gravity are defied: transformation and metamorphosis, disappearance and flight, everything is possible within the space between sleep and wakefulness. Rike Droescher explores the freedom of this space by manipulating forms and materials from nature, and conceiving each sculpture as a poem or a story with an open ending.

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Rike Droescher (b.1990) lives and works in Dusseldorf (DE). She graduated in 2020 from the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Solo and duo exhibitions include: 2023, The Serpent’s Tail, with Zoe Koke, Alice Amati, London; Since The First Branch In The Hand, Atelier am Eck, Düsseldorf; 2022, If You Call Me I Won’t Be Home, Palatului Mogosoaia, Bucharest, The Big Murmur, Moltkerei Werkstatt, Cologne; 2021, Participation Trophy – Mur Brut, Kunsthalle Dusseldorf, Dusseldorf. Her work featured in group exhibitions at Kunsthaus Essen, Essen (2023); Muzeul National al Hartilor si Cartii Vechi, Bucharest (2022); Fuhrwerkswaage, Cologne (2022); K21 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Dusseldorf (2021); Tiroler Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum, Innsbruck (2021) and Goethe-Institut de Paris, Paris (2017), amongst others. She is the recipient of the Art Award for Sculpture of Diaconia Michaelshoven Cologne (2022) and was awarded the Bronner Residency in Tel Aviv (2023).

https://rikedroescher.com

Supported by Alice Amati, London