Toys Are Us: Gosbert Gottmann

At the first glance, we seem to be viewing realistic scenes. Pictures shaped by a sexual obsession and corresponding to the directness of their motifs. Nudes, copulation scenes, and blow jobs as we know them from hardcore or softcore pornography—protagonists radiating a super-cooled beauty!
Does the eroticism now break down because we see our projections reflected from the bodies of dolls? We conceal the confusing realization with a reflex: Ah, we already know this, Cindy Sherman, Louise Bourgois and Walter Pfeiffer have already introduced it! The art pigeonhole helps shield us from succumbing to the peculiar aesthetic experience of the beauty of a well-staged plastic belly or of a back-lit male organ. Gabriela Domeisen’s photographs do not resolve this ambivalence—on the contrary: they solidify the peculiar experience of projection as an aesthetic experience.