A dog sleeping under a glass cabinet that contains a miniature church, a beckoning loose arm, a board game, flowers and a large die like cube. Andrea Freckmann’s ‘Die Welt von gestern’ (Yesterday’s World), boldly painted in a sweeping perspective, refers to the current tendencies of nostalgia in politics and public opinion. She takes a critical approach to this phenomenon by putting the paraphernalia of the past in a glass showcase where they can be observed and appraised. The sense of containment is amplified by the flowery frame that runs around the painting. The dog plays a double part in the scene, his protruding paws breach the frame and open up the image but also enhance the sense of stillness and the past by his dreamlike state.
Andrea Freckmann‘s (1970) new paintings have the general title ‘Damals. So beautiful’ (Once. So Beautiful). Recently a renewed interest in the past can be observed as a response to the unsettling developments of our time. Andrea Freckmann looks at this phenomenon of nostalgia critically because the past is often idealized and does not necessarily correspond to what it really was fifty years or so ago.
The paintings contain paraphernalia from the 60s and 70s such as lace curtains, a Volkswagen beetle, rural villages built around a church or steamtrains in mountainous landscapes. Freckmann adds abstract patterns to these familiar nostalgic images to open up the frozen image of the past and make room for a view to the future.