Loud distorted music, video sequences pulsating to the rhythm, images in images, huge scaffolds with ornamental borders and painted leather hanging from the wall. Raphaela Vogel is a virtuoso of staging, a bold dreamer—born and raised in Franconia.

For her videos she mounts drones with action cameras and lets them fly through barren landscapes, above grazing sheep or circling in her studio. As the protagonist she is usually the focus of the story. The interaction between her and the technical equipment sometimes feels playful like a dance, sometimes spooky as if they were fighting. She stages herself blatantly, seems at times desperate, fragile, graceful or aggressive. The energetic videos show a lot of strange perspectives, reflections, distortions and loops. The piercing sound changes from deafening Heavy Metal to the rhythmic beating of a heart to the Spanish guitar sounds of the Gipsy Kings.

The videos then become part of expansive installations. Vogel builds her exhibitions with a remarkable and delicate sense for the surrounding architecture. High-tech meets seemingly archaic artefacts and banal everyday objects. She combines video projectors, milking clusters and painted goat leather with urinals and ash trays.

The ambiguity and overwhelming aesthetic guarantee that visiting a Raphaela-Vogel-exhibition is always an adventure. With the solo show at Kunstpalais the artist returns to her home region for the first time and invites everyone to dive into her artistic universe.  

Image: I Smell a Massacre, Videostill, Courtesy the artist and BQ, Berlin

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