| A digital artist from Badem-Württenburg, 52-year-old Eicher first achieved fame from her spatial copy collages. These early kaleidoscopically arranged pop-culture die-cuts—culled from the Internet and other commercial media—helped define the artist’s practice of re-contextualizing popular imagery. As a collector and curator of visual content, Eicher works with the Warhol readymade mentality of many contemporary media artists, but differs in her readiness to revisit the static materiality of the plastic arts. Her collage works escape the purgatory of Web 2.0 by returning to the tactile off-line world in which the original photographic stills and advertisements were conceived. | 
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Kari Rittenbach
Three of Margret Eicher’s oversized tapestries were on view at [DAM]Berlin in May, as part of her solo show She.
Courtesy of the artist.A digital artist from Badem-Württenburg, 52-year-old Eicher first achieved fame from her spatial copy collages. These early kaleidoscopically arranged pop-culture die-cuts—culled from the Internet and other commercial media—helped define the artist’s practice of re-contextualizing popular imagery. As a collector and curator of visual content, Eicher works with the Warhol readymade mentality of many contemporary media artists, but differs in her readiness to revisit the static materiality of the plastic arts. Her collage works escape the purgatory of Web 2.0 by returning to the tactile off-line world in which the original photographic stills and advertisements were conceived. In this sense, Eicher’s work explores the disparity (and often striking similarity) between methods of image reproduction today, and those from much earlier moments in history. A series of her aquarelles, for example, feature recognizable figures such as Barbara Eden and are simply printed ink jet—a far cry from the early hand painted naturalist efforts of the Ruskin era.
In the small front room of [DAM]Berlin that faces Tucholsky Strässe, it is easy to forget that one has crossed the threshold into a gallery space—Eicher’s thick, deeply-colored tapestries bring out the dark wood tones of the paneled floor and insulate the cool white encompassing walls. To the far left, Fauna und die Gaukle (Fauna and Imposters), 2003, takes the conventional hunting scene as its theme, situated within an intricately ornate border of architectural ornaments and exotic animals—such a frame, or alentour, being part of the tapestry vernacular. A tiger is pictured lounging in the foreground, but rather than a stag poised attentively in the clearing, Eichen positions six long-legged models before a dramatic red curtain, dripping in fur pelts. Her staging begs the question of what, exactly, contemporary culture is hunting? On the opposite wall Die 5 Tugenden (The Five Virtues), 2008, sits demurely within its cherub-rimmed frame; the viewer distinguishes Eva Longoria perched awkwardly upon a stool, chest protruding, and the figure of Felicity Huffman gracefully stroking the corner of a television set. In Erste Nacht (First Night), 2008 Lara Croft smirks in the right-hand shadow of a midsummer night’s scene of overly sexualized teenage models engaging in the highly-stylized posing of Dolce and Gabanna advertisements. The frame around this last piece is decked with floral garlands, evoking the longing, youthful desires of May. Despite their monolithic size, the texture, depth and muted color palette of Eicher’s tapestries allows them to settle easily upon the consciousness of the viewer; the desired vantage point of contemplation seemingly one of uneasy second-glances to grasp the artist’s technique of situating ridiculous superficiality within a heroic materiality.
Eicher produces approximately four to five such tapestries per year, working in the French tradition of 17th Century Gobelins Tapestry Manufacturing, in which visual material from religious and traditional art was reproduced as faithfully as possible. But the artist has redefined revered iconography to reflect the current cultural climate that feeds on celebrity, fast fashion, and virtual gaming. She has furthermore replaced the skilled weavers, fabric dyers, and craftsmen of the textile industry with a comprehensively digitized process.
After electronically assembling her collages, Eicher sends the digital files to Flanders, where her tapestries are machine woven specifically to her specifications. The textile company with which Eicher works uses the same digital method to produce reproductions of famous paintings in tapestry form for tourists and kitsch-collectors. These items are hence sentimental for the monumental materiality of the wall hanging, itself, an ironic reality of contemporary commercial art production. It is this grandiosity, on a three-dimensioned architectural scale that literally captures the epic cultural status of Eicher’s critique. The artist herself has said: “It is certainly true that a tapestry is not just a picture, but also defines a room.”
Perhaps Eicher’s work is a romantic gesture towards an archaic medium of display, but her practice of carefully fleshing-out the immaterial is certainly one that many media artists are unwilling to make.
