ERLI GRÜNZWEIL
Photography and Art Direction
based in Vienna
contact@erligruenzweil.com
instagram.com/erligruenzweil

Dreaming Is Okay, 2019, together with Susanna Hofer

Dreaming Is Okay originated from a cooperation between the Vienna Design Week, the Zinnfigurenoffizin Kovar and the photographers Susanna Hofer and Erli Grünzweil. The developed artist book is based on the theory of Homo Ludens, which discusses the play element between culture and society. According to his theory, every culture emerges from play. Kovar’s Zinnfigurenoffizin offers hundreds of different figures, an inexhaustible tin made archive of biographies, contemporary history, phantasy, locations and sceneries which open up and infinite space of interpretations. They interlude a playful current of awareness, which does not find an ending. The breakdown into ten chapters comes from the self set limits out of the thousands figures from Mrs. Kovar’s archive. The new order should detach and decontextualize the figures from its former meaning and biography. For example the dancer Fanny Eßler, originally one of the most famous Austrian dancers of the 19th century is presented as a fashion icon. The match of the main character in Andersens Schwefelhölzchen does not go out, the character evolves into a self reflected dialogue with herself. A cluster of trees images the present climate policy. All these chapters show a compilation of photography still lifes and pictures, which document the manufacturing process as well as the material of the research and investigations, which underlines again the playful point of origin.

Each of the ten editions comes with an original tin figure from the Zinnfigurenoffizin Kovar. They are designed and hand painted by the artists Max Freund, Theresa Hattinger, Michaela Landrichter, Fresh Max, Stefan Pani, Amelie Schlögelhofer, Paulina Semkowicz, Marianne Vlaschits, Bettina Willnauer and Edin Zenun.