Ellen Harvey: The Disapointed Tourist: Cat. Museum Der Moderne Salzburg

In her work, New York-based British artist Ellen Harvey makes use of a traditional painterly vocabulary for her strategy of appropriation, whereby she methodically juxtaposes mapping, pasticcio, and institutional critique. For her first solo presentation in Austria and the publication at hand, The Disappointed Tourist, she has chosen the cosmoramas by Hubert Sattler at the Panoramamuseum in Salzburg as inspiration for her question as formulated online: Is there a place that you have always wanted to visit or revisit that no longer exists? The locations suggested by the users meanwhile form a cycle of two hundred paintings; they show, for instance, postcard views of the Buddha statues of Bamiyan, which were blown up by the Taliban in 2001 at the outset of the war in Afghanistan, and of Coney Island amusement park in 1943, which burned down the following year. This is how Ellen Harvey enters into dialogue with her audience; topics such as war, racism, ecological catastrophes, and technological change arise quite naturally, even if it is just about one’ s personal favorite place.