Inflatable Felix, 2020
Information about the artwork
- MaterialPolyester fabric, PVC
- Dimensions1000 x 500 x 500 cm
- Year of acquisition2021
- Inventory numberUAB 1205
- On viewOn view
- Copyright© Mark Leckey. Photo: Sibylle Forster, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Museum Brandhorst, Munich
More about the artwork
“I am a fetishist and I fetishize things. I have to somehow possess them, because I sense that they possess me.” These are words spoken by Mark Leckey, for whom “Felix the Cat,” the legendary comic character from the 1920s, is far more than nostalgia: Felix stands for the power of images, their circulation, and emotional charge. In 1928, a 3D model of Felix was the first image ever to be broadcast on television—an iconic moment on the threshold of global media society. With “Inflatable Felix,” Leckey adapts the character as a larger-than-life, inflatable object, placing himself in a tradition that extends to the cat memes of our present day. From “Grumpy Cat” to “Lil Bub”—few motifs have shaped the internet as profoundly as the cat. For Leckey, Felix is a “proto-meme” of sorts: a figure that connects pop culture, media history, and collective projections. He himself understands Felix as a quasi-divine force: an agent and allegory for the fragmentation of mainstream culture into infinite niches of desire. His repeated artistic return to Felix shows how closely global media events, internet culture, and personal myths are intertwined.
