Güntzel’s main concern is to find ways to make the anthropogenic pollution of the seas and the presence of sculpture in our everyday life visible with the means of art and to bring it back into the consciousness of the viewer. Her artistic approach stems from a deeply rooted aesthetic position that explores the essential dichotomy between visual pleasure and disturbing global issues. Her work is a disturbing critique of modern life in the 21st century. She moves conceptually in different media such as performance, object, embroidery, installation, photography and video.
The work »DISCOUNTER STILL LIFE II« is part of a photographic series for which Swaantje Güntzel reinterpreted in a contemporary way still lifes of well-known Dutch painters, here »Pronkstillleven with fruit and fowl« (1651) by the Dutch Sillleben painter Abraham Hendricksz van Beyeren by rearranging the food used according to today’s consumer habits.
Swaantje Güntzel (*1972 Soest, Germany) lives and works in Hamburg, Germany.