Lotta de Beus | The Great Escape

Dreamlike quality

The Great Escape has a dreamlike quality, which is manifested in both the images and the materials used. The artist uses elements from the visible reality to tempt the viewer to step into her fictional world. Once inside, the depictions are suddenly more difficult to comprehend, and they instead raise questions. What is it that we are looking at?

De Beus staged every aspect of her scenes. She first made costumes and masks, in which friends subsequently performed at carefully selected locations. The artist even recorded an 8mm film of this spectacle. These moving images, as well as the photographs taken during these sessions, served as source material for the ultimate artworks. With this elaborate approach, De Beus created a certain distance from her own reality. The ‘filtered’ or alienating reality offers the viewer sufficient freedom for their own interpretation.