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Tunnel Tunnel is pleased to invite you to the opening of Alex Turgeon’s first solo exhibition in Switzerland, curated by Simon Würsten:
The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier
The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier seeks to render tangible the manifestations of melancholy and nostalgia in popular culture. The exhibition revolves around the motif of the blue rose, a metaphor that combines the color of depression – as in the saying ‘having the blues’ – with the dual symbolism of romance and deception: blue roses do not exist in a natural state and thus must be artificially dyed. In the form of a riddle, Turgeon uses this motif to develop a semiotic web that explores ordinary representations of love and loss as well as the fictional dramatization of romantic despair. The result is a representation of grief not only as an individual feeling of longing, abandonment and sorrow, but also as the kitschy construction of a collective identity. In this respect, the ‘unknown soldier’ embodies the ambiguous status of an anonymous object of communal grief. Just as the blue rose is an artificial creation, the soldier’s tomb functions as the theatrical vehicle of a common mythology. The exhibition space therefore takes the form of a raw urban mausoleum whose glass façade becomes the literal expression of the state of despair of a ruined building. Alex Turgeon’s exhibition is presented as a patchwork of collected fragments, which are stereotypical references to melancholy, while simultaneously characterizing the romantic fantasy of a heroic figure.
Alex Turgeon (1988, CA) lives and works in Berlin.
Simon Würsten (1991, CH) lives and works between Zurich and Basel.
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