HHe sprinkled the people with blood and disappeared for forty days in a cloud enveloping the mountain. Gradually, people stopped looking at the glow illuminating the summit, and the high priest was asked to create a substitute for the absent god. The women, sons, and daughters took the gold earrings off their ears and melted them down into the shape of a calf. The people bowed down to it, brought sacrifices, and proclaimed, „This is God.“When the prophet came down from the mountain and saw this, he took the golden calf and burned it in the fire. What remained of it was crushed to powder and scattered on the water. He then forced the people to drink it down to the last drop.

In the suspended time of an apartment in Ottakring, destroyed images from ancient times reappear on the water‘s surface. Water flows through sculptures marred by the last iconoclastic revolution. One had its face cut off to strip it of its power. All that remains of others is a pile of severed ears, without which the idol cannot hear prayers. Artist Céline Struger freely draws from the repertoire of historical forms and their reinterpreted meanings in pop culture. The exhibition thus juxtaposes a biblically accurate depiction of a seraphim, a barbaric-looking bone decoration created in the second half of the 19th century, and a recent Hollywood variation on stigmata.

Considering the ahistorical return of certain sentiments today, the abuse of faith, tradition, and images as a basis for restrictive policies, this artistic gesture is not without justification. It demonstrates how much of what is considered ancient and natural actually originated in modernity. Some images are swept away by time, only to be replaced by others.

Many years later, the prophet who destroyed the idols had a bronze serpent made and hung it on a flagpole. The people were then plagued by poisonous snakes and believed that a look at the bronze statue would save them from death by bite. In the centuries that followed, people worshipped it by burning incense. It‘s a struggle between iconoclasm and iconophilia taking place within a single soul - a genuine spiritual warfare.

Matej Majda