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Puzzling spaces

Creative project Factory

Key data

Techniques: Drawing, Painting, Collaging
I can do alone: Yes
Required time: < 20 minutes
City: Home

Description

Not everything is always visible at first sight. Some things lie hidden, in “invisible spaces,” so to speak, made up of secret symbols and codes. You think you already know your favorite work in detail? Take a closer look or try your hand at your own puzzle stories in this project and create your own “invisible spaces.”

Instructions for making it yourself

You will need

  • pens
  • paper

Alternatively:

  • acrylic paints
  • paintbrushes
  • oil crayons
  • collage material
  • glue
  • scissors

Ponder this

What is on your mind? Are there things that have special meaning to you? Are you sometimes a mystery to yourself or others? How can you express your personality?

Step 1

Collect objects, symbols, signs, texts, pictures that have something to do with you or interest you.

"It is a really enjoyable experience to think about what it is that actually connects all these things. [...] That is a real puzzle, but it is my puzzle and it feels great to have the chance to really piece all these things together and try to solve it."

Lucy McKenzie

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STEP 2

Make a picture from all of these things to create your own secret story.

 

You can draw, paint, or work with collage—there are no limits to your personal mystery picture!

Talk about it

How closely are artists connected to their works? Can we only understand works of art if we know who created them? Or can (picture) puzzles be solved without the explanations of their artists?

Work in pairs

Present your picture to your friends or to your class.

 

Which symbols do they understand without your explanation?

 

Where do they need a hint from you?

 

Which elements of the picture should remain your secret, a riddle?

"WHAT MORE OR LESS INVISIBLE CODES EXIST IN A SPACE ABOUT HOW TO BEHAVE, AND HOW CAN THEY BE SUBVERTED? HOW CAN YOU TWIST AND TURN THIS SPATIAL LANGUAGE THAT HAS BEEN CONSTRUCTED THERE, SO THAT YOU CAN ACTIVELY INTERVENE YOURSELF?"

Robert Keil

Delve deeper

Artwork Factory

Artwork Lucy McKenzie, Rebecca, 2019

A painted mannequin is at the center of this picture. She is placed in an interior full of specially-designed objects. Marble, wooden and silky materials. A book about the dramatic staging of fashion. And a map of Glasgow, Lucy McKenzie’s birthplace, which is hung as wallpaper.

Delve deeper

Artwork Factory

Artwork Atelier E.B (Lucy McKenzie und Beca Lipscombe), Faux Shop, 2018

“Faux Shop” is a sculptural installation and at the same time a shop window for a fashion collection. The shop window mimics a women's clothing store. Lucy McKenzie painted the marbled parts of the installation herself in an illusionistic manner. Like moving ghosts, the clothes were either pinned to the walls, placed in the display, or suspended dynamically from wires. The clothes are from Atelier E.B, a collaborative fashion label and research studio that Lucy McKenzie runs with designer Beca Lipscombe.