MARIA MAGDALENA PRESSEL | Human Blood Is All One Colour

Often dressed with nothing more than a vintage mask, Marko Zink plays with the topic of eroticism and self-portrayal of men. By doing so, he reveals homo- and heterosexual clichés and demonstrates mercilessly the still discriminating underbelly of our society, as well as builds a bridge to conceptual art. In preparation to this work, the artist logged himself into adult chat room services, using stereotypical nicknames. The chat transcripts, which show the reactions of chat users to those names, result in individual depictions. The calendar, which emerges from the examinations of those chat requests, provokes the question, if this society would react in a similar fashion in 100 years from now. Zink draws his own apparent (logical) conclusion: the title is derived from his conceptual approach. „The 100-year Farmers Calendar“ becomes a bitter irony. But the artist not only holds up a mirror to our society, by uncovering prejudices; he seeks to dissolve the same. Their naked bodies are hand-coloured in the colour of blood and emblematise, on one hand, the overarching, connecting element of humankind, on the other hand depicting an element of online-chat brutality and rudeness, characterised by simple nicknames and associated stereotypes.