Anna-Sophie Berger, Musteraugen, 2021

Anna-Sophie Berger
Musteraugen, 2021

The image shows a sample card from China. The title on it can be translated as “Oriental Button City,” a reference to the market in Yiwu to the southwest of Shanghai, where these products are sold. It was never exhibited in this form, but it refers to works in which Anna-Sophie Berger uses these plastic eyes (right and left, both 2018).

Some of Berger’s works hint at a protagonist who is not clearly present, such as in Complicit 1 and Complicit 2 (both 2018), which are on show in the enjoy exhibition level (Anti-)Pop. There black and red handprints on food packs have this function. This “agent” cannot be clearly identified—perhaps as a portrait or representative of the artist or of a consumer. It stands rather for the difficult balance between dependency and assertions of agency that these works demonstrate. Poetically speaking, the image of the Musteraugen (Sample Eyes) complements the “hands” in Complicit 1 and Complicit 2 with another part of the body.