The Days Are Long, The Nights Are Cold
The first comprehensive publication on Lena Inken Schaefer’s (*1982; lives and works in Berlin) practice The days are long, the nights are cold presents the collection of artist’s works dating from 2007. Here we observe Schaefer’s objects, installations and actions emanate with mystery from associative
contexts. Be it through the ornaments derived from the devalued inflation-banknotes of 1922 or through St. John’s Wort-stained pajamas, the works of Schaefer reveal new possibilities for the patterns to emerge. The artist takes the patterns through the process of continuous dissemblance, use and misuse that enrich them with fresh analogies.
"Ultimately Lena Inken Schaefer’s oeuvre (including her role as an artist) reveals itself as a system that is part of what it organizes and what it thereby attempts to say. Although at one point, individual series seem to be linked together with an underlying theme, at that very moment individual elements become disjointed—just when everything was starting to look all too ‚similar.’" (Dominikus Müller)
