How long is too long for your dreams?

The solo exhibition RRRRReality. Franziska Nast took place at the Arp Museum Bahnhof Rolandseck from 26 February to 17 September 2023. Its starting point was the large-scale work How long is too long for your dreams?, which the artist had created in 2012 as part of the exhibition Die Eroberung der Wand. Nazarenerfresken im Blick der Gegenwart (Conquering the Wall. A Contemporary View on Nazarene Frescoes). At the time, she and eleven other female artists had been invited to look into the genre of mural painting – on site and in interaction with the Speyer Cathedral frescoes of the twelve Apostles by the artist Johann von Schraudolph (1808–1879). The artist chose as her image carriers two columns at the front of the exhibition floor – significant architectural features of Richard Meier’s new building – which she reinterpreted as body parts. Using hectographic ink and tattooing equipment, she inscribed the surface of the columns with a “motif pattern” originating from the nautical repertoire of so-called romantic seafaring, as well as from the motif archive of the legendary tattoo artist Herbert Hoffmann (1919–2010), her longtime friend and teacher.

After the 2012 exhibition, the work was carefully preserved, according to restoration recommendations, under a layer of Hostaphan® (an unplasticised PET film) and solid wallpaper, enabling it to be “stripped off” eleven years later and displayed again. As part of the exhibition RRRRReality. Franziska Nast, the tattooing was “touched up” – enriched with elements, impressions, secret notes, and motifs of the 2023 exhibition, along with the names of all the supervisory staff – as a tribute to those who had spent the longest time with and next to the columns.

This lively, graphic-looking work exists to this day, under a protective layer once again. Since then, it has been one of the Arp Museum’s in situ works, albeit one that is hidden.

Franziska Nast (born 1981, lives and works in Hamburg)
How long is too long for your dreams?, 2012/2023
Concrete columns, hectographic ink tattooed in Climaflex®

526.5 cm, Ø 72.7 cm