Lal Batman’s first solo exhibition in Germany “The Floor is Lava” is now open at Anna Laudel Düsseldorf. Drawing inspiration from popular playground games, the exhibition can be visited until February 4th, 2024. Inspired by common children’s games played in schoolyards, the exhibition exceeds beyond the innocence of childhood games, to delve into complex themes such as ridden anxiety, impending catastrophes, and haunting memories which one is faced with throughout adulthood. Through her art, Batman aims to explore the multifaceted aspects of the human psyche and the anxieties that can manifest as people transit from childhood to adulthood.
“This exhibition will make you feel like your feet were swept off the ground,” says Lal Batman about her first solo exhibition in Germany, Düsseldorf, which includes artworks that will be unveiled to meet the audience for the first time and differ distinctly in style and format from her previous oeuvres. The artist creates a conglomerate of futuristic landscapes, underworld scenarios, and fantastic imagery in her sculptural and video works reflecting the vast range of mental states we experience. All the while she maintains a witty and ironic distance from the narrative content.
Batman’s self-composed soundtracks which highly resemble ASMR, induce trance-like states in the audience, making them feel immobilized by the screen. The sculptures in the exhibition, with their preposterous size and mass, mirrors the bizarre, grotesque and also sinister games of childhood, obstructing the audience’s movement in the exhibition space.
Batman’s artistic practice also concerns the age of accelerating digitalization and our interaction with social media. She parallels this reality, this meta-world, in her own work by alluding to the search for security, affirmation, relationships and expectations we foster by doing so. She vividly communicates the human psyche’s need for love, tenderness and harmony as well as the irresistible fascination for evil, horror and destruction.
The audience will move through the exhibition more like crossing a floor transforming meter by meter into lava, drawing people in and out of perilous yet intriguing dreams or nightmares.
Lal Batman’s work, presented for the very first time in Germany, can be seen in the playful and daring exhibition “The Floor is Lava” until February 4th 2024 at Anna Laudel Düsseldorf.
Press release from Anna Laudel
Image: Lal Batman. Installation view of The Floor is Lava at Anna Laudel Düsseldorf, 2023. Photography by Katja Illner. Image courtesy of Anna Laudel
