Installation & performance
Herbie in the Bath
A homage to Jacques-Louis David’s “The Death of Marat”
What remains is the bathtub – filled with memories of the Revolution.
“Herbie in the Bath” is a homage to Jacques-Louis David’s painting “The Death of Marat” (1793). Stephan Graf Bentzel-Sturmfeder brings individual elements of the picture into three-dimensional space, alters them and places them in a new context.
What remains is the bathtub, filled with memories of the Revolution. In it lies the skeleton “Herbie”, named after the jazz pianist Herbie Hancock. The installation was shown in 2014 at the Parallel art fair in Vienna and has since been presented at other venues.
01 — The installation
The installation
Bathtub and skeleton enter into a dialogue with the pictures on the wall: watercolours, mixed-media works and a candelabra frame the scene. Coloured light turns the bathtub into a stage somewhere between deathbed and bath.
Installation views, 2016
02 — The performance
The performance
Schloss Pörnbach · 7 July 2018
In summer 2018, Stephan Graf Bentzel-Sturmfeder gave a performance at Schloss Pörnbach in front of a large-format work covered in red traces of paint. The sequence of pictures captures the movement in front of the canvas: standing, opening up, crouching, lying down – and the hand that reaches back into life.
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03 — Stations
Stations
- 2014Parallel art fair, Vienna
- 2014Bar Transfer, Erlangen – presentation with works by Stephan Graf Bentzel-Sturmfeder (November)
- 2018Schloss Pörnbach – performance in front of the canvas