Failed Dioramas
A crocodile basks between cardboard boxes, a horned lion stretches its snout in the air from under a tablecloth while an African ostrich stands under a lucky star. Italian photographer Louis De Belle visited a private cabinet of curiosities in the apartment of a Milanese collector where he documented a bizarre array of hunting trophies, haphazardly combined in all possible manners.
However Louis De Belle decided not to rearrange the animals, but to work with the situation he found and to interpret them as “Failed dioramas”. The series show the animals in strange and even grotesque relationships with the furnishings in the apartment and is exhibited as a photographic installation: an assemblage of cardboard boxes of different sizes and heights, on top of which the prints are laid under glass.
A numbered and signed catalogue book, with an introduction by curator Felix Sattler, was released on the occasion of the solo exhibition Failed Dioramas at Tieranatomisches Theater der Humboldt Univeristät zu Berlin. It is entirely printed on recycled kraft paper, which resembles the cardboard boxes of the installation.
Artist: Louis De Belle
Design: Lukas Beck
