HD Video 4 min. Courtesy the artist. 2019.
In her work, Catherine Biocca merges different levels of dimensions, combining diverse media to create an unfamiliar reality.
The result is a mix of bi- and tri-dimensional elements, displaced and layered with cartoon imagery and details from science fiction, and responding to human brutality throughout our cultural history. The characters in Biocca’s works evoke cartoons or animated figures that are involved in uncomplicated events and simple settings, charged with the comic brutality inherent to their existence. Biocca stretches the moment of recognition to absurd lengths, questioning why we accept violence as a form of entertainment
“Schadenfreude” – an untranslatable German term for the pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others – forms the basis of her research. Exploiting an unprocessed and raw form to question a rather violent – and yet tremendously entertaining – side of life, Biocca understands art as a tool to reveal the emptiness and nonsense of life as its only real sense. The violence Biocca exhibits is nevertheless treated with so much humour that one cannot but embrace her cruel universe with guilty pleasure.
Catherine Biocca (b.1984 Rome) lives and works in Berlin. In 2013 she graduated from the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and received her postgraduate/residency program at Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam, during 2014-2015.