Frieze
Art Observed

JTT Podcast: instruments of fraud

Anna-Sophie Berger (b. 1989) is an artist based in Vienna and New York. Trained in fashion, Berger maintains a sculptural practice informed by a psychosocial and economic understanding of objects - their individual use as well as their commodification. In recent work, she explores these themes through an investigation of historical sumptuary laws. These serve to “regulat[e] the consumption of materials for citizens’ daily fashions usually on religious or moral grounds and naturally corresponding to strict class lines,” as she describes in her essay “Waist of Money.”

Berger often embeds her objects and installations with a complex symbolic language. By taking recourse to stage organization in theater her sculptures can appear as actors as well as props. In several new works this manifests through the appropriation of components from works of art from the early modern period, such as the Unicorn Tapestries or the allegory of Wealth from the medieval epic poem “Romance of the Rose.” Christian scholastic themes are scrutinized for their bearing on contemporary notions of morals. Other sculptures isolate elements of incidental design from shared municipal spaces including playgrounds, parks, and construction sites. Thus, Berger links the ever-contingent meaning of objects to both their popular and historical understanding.