Newly Opened Emblematick Cabinet

Drawings, 1996-2002


"... On sheet no. 14 of his ‘Newly Opened Emblematick Cabinet’, Wolf von Waldow’s linear precision evokes various phases of man between life and death. As if representing a modern cycle of life, six men grouped around a transistor radio enact different dance poses like frozen stills inside a revolving zoetrope from the pioneering days of cinema, creating the illusion of sequential movement. But the cheerful occasion is spoiled by the isolation of each participant inside his own urn-like container, by the physical handicap of a figure limping on a wooden leg and by a skeleton that has joined in the dancing. This modern memento mori is also being photographed by a figure on the outside. Von Waldow has thus created an allegory for the hermetic information system of our unfeeling yet sensationalist media-driven society."

Claus Mewes (excerpt from his catalogue essay in: „connections – Zeichnungen Hamburger Künstler und Künstlerinnen“, 1996)