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Invitation to the Flying Carpet

Bronze: This is the material equestrian statues are made of, Philipp the Umpteenth who raises his lance in central public places. The heads of socialist thinkers are made of bronze, bigger than live, on impressive pedestals. Being impolite, you could say: Big and boring things are made of bronze, frozen in bathos. Bronze and movement do not harmonize. Nobody pays attention. Everyone walks carelessly by.

Until in Villingen-Schwenningen, in front of the town hall, a waist-high bronze post by Vincent Mitzev has its own ideas. It doesn´t want to be rigid any more. So it starts moving, slowly, softly. It changes into a phallus and disturbs innocent passers-by right in the middle of the pedestrian zone.

The lofty gestures are still in vogue. In Munich, a company put up Borofsky´s huge „Walking Man“, a symbol for corporate vigour. These thinking habits Vincent Mitzev forces to their knees: with his bronze cast of a mouse-trap or the rusty lid of an air shaft which is to be removed from the central station in Sofia and to be reinstalled in the Munich Leopoldstraße. He undermines the grand attitudes of others. For this reason one wishes to see his sculptures in the same grand public spaces.

His work „Untitled“ shows the photo of two artists which has been imbedded in the top of a rigid iron post. A Rumanian and a Japanese, close buddies, both like to get drunk. There is some logic to the fact that Vincent Mitzev uses a motor to set the photo in elliptical motion until the faces blur and become grimaces.

Sometimes the movement is intensified to jolts. „Martha and I“ makes the two people on the photo shake so hard that they nearly lose their faces, even if they are secured on an iron plate, hemmed with blue ornamental fabric. A loving couple in turbulent times? Or a couple that likes to fight?

In other cases Vincent Mitzev dispenses with motion. The „Place of Revelation“ combines four bidets in original size to a porcelain four-leaf-clover. It invites us to settle down, like insects on a flower. Maybe we could have a cosy chat with the neighbour. If not – each one can relax. Revelation is a possibility indeed. We only need a little courage.

Often Vincent Mitzev´s gestures are inviting. In Odeonsplatz, Munich, he puts a house-top on the ground. Some hints, where windows could be, a pale-yellow edge and the warm red-brown of an oriental rug. The height is perfect for sitting. The dream of flying seems near at hand. For sitting on a roof feels not like sitting on a profane bench in a park.

An advice may be added: Don´t bother Vincent Mitzev with endless blabbing about the woman´s role in society. He might lose patience and try to have sex with as many women as possible within 50 days and nights. Or was this his artistic persona?

Elena Heitsch (Translation: Christine Wunnicke)

    Einladung auf den fliegenden TeppichInvitation to the Flying Carpet

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