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"What you see is what you get"
Carolin Jörg's "Jalouse"-Series."

Jalouse" is a trip into the world of fashion on sheets of paper. Drawn after advertisments from fashion journals models loll around and present the newest handbags and shoecollections as well as the names and logos of the large fashion icons - Dolce&Gabbana, Gucci, Versace, Chanel... What seems to be loosly drawn by hand hides a profound examination with the production processes of our time with advertising strategies which permanently try to ensure us the existence of a perfect parallel world in which one can easily switch over by purchasing a certain fragrance or particular stilettos.

Carolin Jörg drew the series "Jalouse" during a scholarship stay at the Ecole Supérieure Beaux Art in Paris, the capital of fashion, where everyone always seems to be perfectly dressed, besides those one can easily feel out of place. In Paris fashion plays a crucial role, while admitting to be into fashion in Germany always risks to be taken as superficial and vain. In Germany fashion seems to bet he most unimportant minor matter of all and what Walter Benjamin wrote in "The Arcades Poject" in 1940 "the one who understands to read the fashion would also understand not only current developments in the arts but also the ones in law, wars and revolutions" doesn't seem to interest today. Fashion in Germany has nothing to so with everyday life, at the utmost in terms of "clothing".

Fashion thereby is much more than just the bare material on our skins. A major free online encyclopedia defines "fashion" as a "prevailing mode of expression, but quite often appl[ying] to a personal mode of expression that may or may not apply to all. Inherent in the term is the idea that the mode will change more quickly than the culture as a whole." According to this definition "fashion" is a certain social behavior subjected to changes, which constitute its regularity.

Apparently it is not the clothes as such, which make the difference in Paris, but a certain attitude in the original meaning of the word "fashion". Thus it is not the immaculate model from the advert with the desired Prada purse which excites envy, but rather what's behind, the parallel world, into which one can't switch over easily as the advertisment has promised, also not with an appropirate balanced account.

It's a certain way of living and articulating oneselve and positioning within the society and thus a question of style - inspired not dictated by the advertisement and - and creativity.

Carolin Jörg's "Jalouse" series doesn't deal with glamour and luxury of the clothing industry. Her drawings in their sloppy manner don't give them credit at all. It rather deals with the search for individuality within a society which constantly changes fashionlike. "Fashion" to Carolin Jörg not means impeccable production, but rather self representation, connected to an articulation of social affiliation.

In her video works, which were produced at the same time in Paris, it's even more clearly. Starting point is always an advertisment from a fashion magazine. Carolin Jörg alienates these by overpainting them with indian ink. Tears flood out of the model's eyes, antlers grow out of their heads, swells grow out of their skins. Creases cover the picture and which finally dissolves into a sole nightmare. The beautiful face has disappeared. What remains is a black hole, which turns immediately into the tender unaffected creature. The transformation starts again, an inexorable stream, which affords no hold to the tumbling viewer. Just as little as the constantly changing society, whose image after all is the fashion, not superficial at all, rather "a very certain form of particulate and changing self representation of the society within the society." (Thomas Khurana "rotation. Only one, in each case the other one. Elena Espositos book concerning the paradoxes the mode ". In: Texts to art November 2004, number 56 "mode", hrsg. of Isabelle Graw, S. 166). A society in which we have to find our places, every season anew.

[Mahret Kupka], April 2007