Miguel Rothschild

Nothing is sacred to Miguel Rothschild. The Berlin-based Argentinian artist (*1963) likes to play with set pieces from church history and with perceptual conventions: photographs of cathedral rosettes are perforated for his surprising visual objects or hung with colored fishing line—the glass Madonnas flutter from the wall like confetti or colorful rain. In the series The Birds, Rothschild populates scenes from Hitchcock’s movie with turtledoves from art history, with a highly sinister result. He builds games of skill from confessional lattices; the challenge is to attempt the impossible and place one of the countless balls on each cross. He even simulates the big bang using symbols and signs from comic strips on painted canvas—in the beginning was the word? Rothschild appropriates art-historical icons in a refreshingly disrespectful way, liberates them from status and role, and in doing so relies on the subversive force of laughter.