Verena Issel's installations feel friendly and inviting they are soft round colorful-we
cannot but smile when we look at them. The sculptures and pictures she makes for them are
replicas sometimes laced with irony of familiar objects from nature and culture-palm trees
ancient columns and more-which she manufactures out of materials that surround us in everyday
life and the domestic sphere such as an old bag foamed plastic fragments or a drainpipe. They
are awkward giants monochrome simplified two- and three-dimensional forms that wish us no
ill. Taking a closer look we realize that they embody what has been lost that they are a
plastic version of what we are destroying or have destroyed already: nature obviously but
also ourselves and our cultural and social achievements. Their merriment and sympathy are
tinged with melancholy and the loss is doubly painful when we consider that the sculptures and
graphic art are filled with no more than an imitation of life and an exaggerated one. This
catalogue presents a survey of Issel's diverse and sprawling oeuvre. Expertly choreographed
shots of the colorful works convey vivid impressions of her installations.
