FROTTEE, an installation by Simone Demandt as part of the exhibition “Hot Baths”

Opening Thursday, November 25, 18 p.m. to January 7, 2005

Baden-Baden artist Simone Demandt has conceived an installation titled "FROTTEE" on the theme of "bathing." It will be shown in the castle cellar of Neuenbürg Castle concurrently with the cultural-historical special exhibition "Hot Baths in Cool Forests." The unusual "FROTTEE" project in the castle cellar marks the beginning of a series of interpretative and artistic explorations that thematically complement the cultural-historical exhibitions at Neuenbürg Castle.

Hundreds of white towels of various sizes hang from seven large rotary clotheslines – made of "cotton fabric with protruding loops." Behind and between them lie the imagined desires, fantasies, and fears of bathers at a public (health) spa. The sensual pleasure of bathing involuntarily accompanies contemplation of one's own body and that of other bathers. Who hasn't caught themselves "cutting a good figure" at the edge of the pool? Who doesn't know the feeling of physical self-alienation in the moment of relentless nudity? The artist has mounted short statements in light boxes in transparent, colored foil lettering. The light, underlaid with texts written in various handwritings, shimmers from behind the towels, illuminating the rotary clotheslines "from within," and thus transforming the banal everyday object into a theatrical bearer of secrets. The basement becomes a stage. Using associative quotations from literature and her own texts, Simone Demandt presents various observations and reflections on physical self-perception and the sense of self as a bather at a public bathhouse. The artist's work is concerned with evoking emotional fragments in the viewer. Simone Demandt has created photo installations for various museums and exhibition institutions, taught photography for several years at the Pforzheim Academy of Art and Design, and for "FROTTEE" has, for the first time in a long time, placed the installation at the forefront, complementing it with photography. The rotary clotheslines are flanked by light boxes displaying film stills from Federico Fellini's film "8 1/2." The black-and-white film, shot in 1962, depicts the atmosphere of a spa resort in an ironic yet melancholic way, which in the film serves as the backdrop for the exhaustion and crisis of film director Guido.

Simone Demandt

1959
born in Dortmund

1979-1985
Stuttgart Art Academy and University of Stuttgart

1987
Project grant from the Baden-Württemberg Art Foundation

1994
Art Prize of the Heinrich Böll Comprehensive School Lütgen-Dortmund

2000
Art Prize of the Heinrich Böll Comprehensive School Lütgen-Dortmund

2003
International City of Arts, Paris

1996-1999
Teaching position for photography and drawing at the University of Graphic Design and Fine Arts Freiburg

1999-2003
Lecturer for photography at the University of Art and Design, Pforzheim