2007-08-10 Doors for Towelie Doors for Towelie, 2007 9 steel doors, adhesive film, plaster 204 × 90 × 83 cm The work refers to A Million Little Fibers, an episode of South Park in which Towelie writes an autobiography that is rejected because its author is a towel. He recasts himself as the human “Steven McTowelie” and is celebrated until his identity is exposed. Oprah Winfrey first confers legitimacy on his story, then withdraws it, turning her audience against him and inciting a mob to pursue him. She occupies the position of a gatekeeper, deciding which bodies and stories may enter public recognition, and in what form. Later, in the course of the pursuit, Towelie’s very flatness allows him to slip beneath locked doors and open them from the inside. In Doors for Towelie, nine identical white steel fire doors are installed directly one behind another. Their industrial hardness meets a cartoon logic of relentless accumulation: barrier piles upon barrier, as though every obstacle overcome were immediately answered by another. The result is the fever dream of an interminable chase, a body being buried under an ever-growing sequence of impediments. Yet the sequence contains its own escape route. The body for which these doors were not made can pass where the body they presuppose cannot. What appears as inadequacy under one norm becomes an ability under another. reference images: Towelie, South Park © South Park / Comedy Central shown in: “New Sundays”, Galerie du Jour agnès b., Paris, France (2008, solo show) “Robert Estermann. Manor Kunstpreis Luzern 2007”, Kunstmuseum Luzern, Lucerne, Switzerland (2007, solo show) bibliography: Robert Estermann. Pleasure, Habeas Corpus, Motoricity. The Great Western Possible, ed. Susanne Neubauer, Kunstmuseum Luzern / edition fink, Zurich, 2007, ISBN 978-3-03746-105-1, pp. 10, 60–61 Susanne Neubauer, Robert Estermann, an Introduction (EN) / Robert Estermann zur Einführung (DE), 2007 Elisabeth Lebovici, Robert Estermann, Blue Rider (EN) / Robert Estermann, Blue Rider (FR), 2007 Adrian Lucas, Drawing Desire, or How I Feel Much Better Today Than Tomorrow (EN) / Drawing Desire, oder wie ich mich heute viel besser fühle als morgen (DE), 2007 Kati Moser, “Der Pfahlbauer”, Schweizer Illustrierte, February 20, 2007, pp. 75–76 see also: Scrub the same spot long enough and a mouth will emerge, then an entire citizen, 2026